


Ouroboros

by Undead Artist (UndeadArtist)



Series: The Messy Reality of Waking Up [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: ANBU see a lot of bad stuff, Age Difference, Age Regression/De-Aging, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Author has an unconventional way of looking at intimacy, Bisexual Female Character, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Fix-It of Sorts, Found Family, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, It's not easy being a child again when you're a twenty-eight-year-old assassin, LGBTQ Female Character of Color, Loyalty, Male-Female Friendship, Mental Health Issues, Morally Ambiguous Character, Multi, Naruto and ANBU Weasel were alone for a long time, Platonic Cuddling, Platonic Relationships, Polyamory, Slow Burn, The world ended and it wasn't pretty, Threesome - F/F/M, Time Travel, Touch-Starved, Trust Issues, Unreliable Narrator, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-14
Packaged: 2019-04-28 21:16:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 51,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14457924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UndeadArtist/pseuds/Undead%20Artist
Summary: "You have to change this."ANBU Weasel finds her loyalties being tested after being sent back in time.





	1. ANBU Weasel

ANBU Weasel dies in the destruction of the village she’d given up everything to protect. 

Her Kage drags her limp body through the dirt, stumbling and swearing as he gets her into the middle of the seal drawn with desperate fingers through the mud. 

“You have to change this,” he tells her as he collapses down on his knees, her body half cradled in his lap and against his chest. “There is no-one else who can do this, do you understand?” He fumbles for her hand, squeezing it tightly as he looks down into her eyes. “I have to be the one to activate the seal.” There’s something frail and desperate, a last shred of hope in the blue of his eyes. _“You have to change this.”_

He presses his forehead against hers and something warm drips against her face. “I’m sorry,” he laughs wetly. “I just realised I don’t even know your name.” He huffs, his breath warm against her lips. “Doesn’t matter now.” He draws back and wipes at his eyes. “Make sure to tell it to me when you’re back, alright?” 

He smiles and she wants to reach out and trace it – wants to etch it into her very soul. 

She loves this man – her Kage. 

Her next breath is a rattle and he frowns in worry and he’s saying something as he stumbles to his feet but she can’t hear him.

The last thing she sees is a pulse of violent red that tears through her ruined body and then a flash of brilliant blue light.

-

She wakes up six-years-old again.

-

Like all orphans with a lick of chakra in their blood it doesn’t take long before recruitments to the Academy comes sniffing around.

Raidou is a familiar face – younger than she ever remembers seeing him and sans the scar on his cheek. Fifteen, maybe, and he’d clearly pulled the short straw coming out to the poorer districts of Konoha. 

“You’re a brave kid,” he tells her.

He knows as well as she does that save her there is maybe one other kid with enough chakra to ever make the ranks.

Her mother was the third cousin of the current Raikage whose cousin in turn she’d been named for. It’s an entirely convoluted story and she meets the man twice before he executes her parents for treason two days before she turns five.

She has her mother's dark skin and coarse curls and her father's build and eyes but she remembers little of them.

She does know that they were both shinobi – good enough to make it to the rank of chunin. 

It wasn’t the rule but it usually meant larger and more developed chakra coils compared to children born to civilians and she’d been accessing her chakra since waking up two months earlier. Chakra sensitives, those sent out to recruit, could sense that and he would be weeding the hopeless cases out to prevent overloading the classes at the Academy.

He does raise an eyebrow at her name but since A took the Raikage post the letter system exclusive to Kumo had become, not well-known, but at least familiar to anyone with a Bingo Book.

-

She spends the rest of the day scouring the streets, finding that her feet has automatically led her to the Hokage tower around mid-noon. She buys dango from coins pocketed from civilians who’d glared at her just a tad too forcefully and spends nearly two hours just watching shinobi move in and out of the front entrance. 

It’s nearly two years until Kyuubi and the death of the Yondaime. They’re at the end notes of the Third Shinobi War. 

_“You have to change this.”_

She takes a sip of her cider.

Namikaze Minato was the father of her Kage and he would die on the night of the Kyuubi attack alongside Uzumaki Kushina. The Sandaime would be forced to come out of his retirement and with Danzo in his ear it would ultimately lead to the Uchiha massacre and the loss of one of the brightest shinobi Konoha had ever birthed and then, later, the betrayal of a second.

Her body is only six – it will be eight at the night of the Kyuubi attack. It is beyond her physical capabilities to handle. 

But information can be shared. 

Thing is, one does not just walk into the office of the Hokage – especially not as a street rat. She would be turned away at the door and if she insisted it would be made forcefully. 

Her best bet is getting into the Academy and get someone curious enough. 

ANBU use a specialised coded language for message exchanges. It’s common enough to be overlooked but there are key phrases that look strange when repeated enough by an Academy-kid. Especially when HOKAGE and INFORMATION and EMERGENCY are the ones appearing.

It would mean nothing to a chunin teacher but she just needs someone to look – someone high-ranked enough to have the ear of the Hokage.

It was the next best thing to throwing a brick at a Clan Head for attention. 

Sure, some of them were reasonably accessible. Yamanaka ran a flower shop on his spare time outside T&I and Akimichi had chains of restaurants that he occasionally visited which made for excellent stake-out spots. And since the Uchiha’s hadn’t been blamed for the Kyuubi-attack courtesy of Danzo Fugaku was a good choice too as the head of the KMPF.

But she doesn't trust them. 

ANBU Weasel is loyal to her Kage and her Kage only. He has sent her back in time to prevent the complete destruction of the village he loved but _her_ Konoha is already gone. 

The Yondaime was the closest she got to her Kage.

He _has to be the one told first._

-

She’s given her own apartment on her entrance to the academy and a small spending fee for bare necessities.

The first thing she buys is a bright orange mug to drink her morning juice in and then buys a pair of simple straw sandals. She trades the oversized cast-offs from the orphanage for proper clothes and picks up one of the scentless soaps through henge at one of the popular shinobi haunts. 

Being on her own again is both good and bad. 

She’d spent most of her life alone – one didn’t become ANBU for the company. But the last three years had been spent in trenches, huddled up for warmth during nights where they didn’t want to catch attention, a constant at her Kage’s side.

It feels strange not to have him there with her. Feels strange with the silence. 

Even at his lowest her Kage had been chatty. 

She distracts herself with training – works through what the Academy gives her to keep track on what level she’s expected to be at while picking up new material under henge at the library. Her chakra control is shot to hell but it’s a bit like stretching out a cramped muscle and it doesn’t take long before she’s keeping several leaves stuck to her body while pouring over a new book. 

She’s at the top of her class without any effort – a child prodigy in the making. 

She’d been good the first time around but not twenty-eight extra years of experience good. 

It naturally makes people wary and she tries not to smile as she codes the test carefully to read YOU ARE RUNNING OUT OF TIME in the margins. 

-

In the end, she gets what she wants. 

She is not prepared for her own reaction.

ANBU Weasel loves her Kage more than anything. At twenty-eight she hasn’t been called by her civilian name for over six years and she both clings to it and takes every opportunity to shove it into her Kage’s face. 

_“I can’t be a Kage without a village,”_ he insists when she dons her mask. _“You don’t have to wear that anymore!”_

It becomes an old argument.

The blond hair and blue eyes are so much like her Kage that for a second she forgets how to breathe. And when she looks to the side, away, she is met by a familiar chin and nose caught between a curtain of blood and she recoils so hard she steps onto her teacher’s foot, seeing mouths moving and hearing nothing. 

She comes aware of the world to a familiar mask and a stringent of ANBU-coding for safety and a tap-tap of SAFE against the floor.

Over-kill.

She tells the man as much and gets a snort of amusement from the female ANBU behind him. 

He’s ANBU Bear but he’s not her ANBU Bear. He’d either been retired or dead by the time she donned her mask. Likewise the woman is entirely unfamiliar and she doesn’t even remember seeing an ANBU Gorilla in the ranks.

“Now that you’re here with us,” ANBU Gorilla says, “mind telling us how a seven-year-old is familiar enough with ANBU code to subconsciously revert to it upon being startled?” 

That’s an understatement if she ever heard it.

She can kinda see why these two are partners.

-

ANBU Weasel will only speak to the Yondaime and the Yondaime is what she eventually gets on a second try – this time with her hands bound and he with a hat crammed over his head which makes her stare as ANBU Gorilla drops her to the ground between them.

Without the combination of yellow hair and blue eyes it’s easier to see that the shape of their eyes are different and she slowly relaxes her shoulders as she mentally categorizes him as Kage’s Father.

“In one year and three months you and your wife are going to die.”

She’s done smoother mission reports but it isn’t her worst one. 

-

Yondaime listens without interrupting as she draws the picture in broad terms, ignoring the way both ANBUs loom over her as she struggles with compromising twenty-eight years of living history.

“And then he sent you back here.”

She nods, feeling strangely exhausted as she struggles not to sway in place. There’s a familiar grief tugging at her attention but she pushes it back – focuses on the man before her and the warmth of the two ANBU who’d gone very still somewhere around the death of the Sandaime. 

“This is a lot to take in you understand.” 

“I do.” She makes the ANBU sign for SECRECY and enjoys the twitch from ANBU Bear behind her. “I’m having a hard time believing it most days and I’m living it.” It comes out more bitter than she means it to and she draws a deep breath to center herself.

“You’ve been back for almost a year,” ANBU Bear says with a note of suspicion. “How come you didn’t approach anyone else before this? If what you say is true we’ve lost valuable time planning for this catastrophe.” 

ANBU Weasel can rationalize it best she can – can make excuses that would fit the narrative. 

But she looks at the Yondaime, meets those blue eyes of his as he threads his fingers together by his chin and watches her with sharp eyes. “Because I loved your son," she tells him honestly. “And because, as his father, you’re the closest thing I have to him now.”

-

It’s easier to meet Kushina a second time.

She’s in T&I, flopped out on her back on the floor with a bowl of food untouched beside her. It isn’t bad food – rice and a good portion of salmon with actual spices. But her anxiety is making her nauseous despite her best effort to curb it. 

She turns her head when the door creaks open and her Kage’s mother steps inside and it’s startling to realise that she’d been older on her day of her death than this woman would ever grow to be unless they managed to change the events of the Kyuubi-attack.

Twenty-two, she thinks, almost twenty-three.

Her Kage had only reached his twenties.

She folds down on the floor unceremoniously, long red hair pooling behind her. She’s in shinobi gear – blue shirt and pants with the standard Uzumaki spiral on her shoulder and there’s a smudge of dirt on her cheek. Post-mission and a hurried clean-up.

“Tell me about him.” It isn’t a request. “Tell me about my son.”

-

Her Kage is sixteen when he becomes Hokage, Konoha is gone before he turns seventeen. 

It had gone to shambles long before that. The Sandaime had served too long, had been too lenient with Danzo who’d conspired with both Orochimaru and Madara in a twisted effort to bring Konoha back to the glory days through full-scale war. 

Maybe they would have had a chance if Orochimaru hadn’t taken the body of Uchiha Sasuke on the boy’s sixteenth birthday, losing them the ally of Uchiha Itachi who’d sacrificed everything for his little brother and whose wrath had been wretched and desperate.

Tsunade-sama had done her best but the aftermath of the invasion had left Konoha weak and with Danzo constantly working against her in the shadows it had been a fruitless effort from the get-go. She’d been killed at the Kage meeting where Iwa and Kiri revealed themselves to be in alliance with Akatsuki. A had narrowly escaped thanks to B but both the Godaime Hokage, her ANBU guard and the Kazekage had been killed. 

She gets appointed to the personal guard of her Kage because she’s at the right place at the right time and it is she who drags him away on the command of Haruno with the promise to keep him safe.

She sits beside his unconscious body as Konoha levels into nothing with the roar of the unleashed bijuu. 

He never forgives her for it. 

-

In the end they have more to risk by not trusting her and it’s decided that she cannot stay on her own.

ANBU Weasel picks up her orange cup and bag of clothes and glances around herself as they step into the Nara compound. It is a good choice – the Nara clan were nomads from the beginning and naturally tended towards darker colouring which meant she didn’t stick out like a sore thumb. 

They were also a clan renowned for their intelligence and their lands guarded by their deer which would make it hard to sneak information past their noses if it turned out that she wasn’t what she claimed to be. With the Yamanaka Clan and Akimichi Clan being close friends with the Nara Head it wouldn’t be strange for her to move between them either.

Clever, she thinks, as she trots after the young Nara matriarch.

“Is that all you have?” Yoshino asks as she drops the bag of clothes by the dresser and puts the cup on the bedside table. “Yondaime-sama said you’d been back for almost a year now.” 

She has some notebooks sealed into the scroll tucked into her back pouch and a handful of books from the Academy but other than that?

“I have to buy more soap,” she admits. “But other than that I’m set.”

This gets her a sigh for some reason.

-

She doesn’t see the Yondaime or Kushina for several weeks as she struggles to get into the rhythm of having people around her. Shikaku is pretty laidback and content to leave her to her own device but Yoshino is firmer.

“Breakfast, lunch and dinner will be served downstairs and we eat together,” Yoshino tells her when she tries to slink upstairs. “You can’t hide away forever.” 

So she tries. 

She ventures downstairs towards the evening and reads curled up at the edge of the couch as Shikaku and Yoshino drink sake together, occasionally playing a game or reading out loud from books. They bicker a lot and those evenings are the hardest to remain by them.

She’s twenty-eight, almost twenty-nine, but her body is going on seven and she’s not the only one who finds it hard to find a middle-ground as Shikaku substitutes her sake for one of the ciders she’s fond of.

“It’s bad for your growth,” he says when she slants him a look. “You might be an adult but your body is not. Also, it doesn’t reflect well on us if you’re spotted drinking sake.” 

She concedes to the fact that he has a point. 

-

Yoshino’s pregnancy becomes a thing in January and it’s a strange thing to imagine and she wonders if it’ll really be a small Shikamaru that is being born or if she’s already changed things.

Mikoto is heavily pregnant and ANBU Weasel is at least half-way reasonably sure that she hasn’t impacted that clan in any way so she’s expecting a small Uchiha Sasuke come July. 

She doesn’t remember Haruno’s parents but she does start keeping an eye out for pink haired babies when she runs errands for Yoshino and Shikaku as an excuse to get her out of the house. 

Her Kage is born the tenth of October and she finds that her steps leads her past the Hokage office more often than not and she tries to distract herself by alternating her time between training and going over information and answering questions from any of the people chosen to keep an eye on her. 

Mostly it’s Inoichi or Shikaku or Yoshino but occasionally Choza and his wife Yuya stop by with enough food to make her feel bloated for days. It doesn’t help that one of them had picked up on her fondness for anything with apples and she falls in love somewhere around the time she tastes the apple tart pies Yuya pushes over in her direction. 

They’re an interesting combo. Yuya is a tall willowy woman who is nearly matched in height with her husband and they appear as quite the power couple side-by-side despite the latter being civilian born.

She meets Inoichi’s wife Ayano once – a round robust woman with a sharp no-nonsense attitude. But she works as a diplomat and spends more time out of the village than in it. 

She seemed to suit Inoichi well, with him being practically married to his work in Intelligence. She remembers Ino fairly well from her Kage’s reflections and the more time she spends with the man the more she suspects it had been a marriage of convenience although they appeared amenably enough to each other. 

-

“I’m pregnant,” Kushina tells her as she stops by for tea in February and ANBU Weasel nearly drops her cup. 

Yoshino and Shikaku are both there, so is Inoichi, and she feels their eyes on her as she places her cup slowly onto the table, her eyes fixated on the still flat stomach of the woman before her and an achy sort of desperation she doesn’t know what to do with. 

“Tsunade-hime says the child will be born in late September, early October.” 

_Her Kage had been born on the tenth of October._

Her fingers curl into the fabric of her shorts and she draws a desperate breath as she struggles to center herself. Finds her lip quivering and bites down on it ruthlessly as she draws another breath. 

In through the mouth, out through the nose.

“Congratulations.” It comes out hoarse and she clears her throat desperately, curbs the urge to flee as she folds her fingers together carefully. 

Kushina watches her with contemplative eyes as she struggles to get herself under control. “Minato wasn’t just yanking my chain,” she says and ANBU Weasel looks up at her. “You really loved him, didn’t you?”

“He was my Kage.” The only one she’d had and she’d failed him. 

Kushina shakes her head. “It doesn’t have to equalize the same thing. Following orders and loving your leader is two separate things entirely.” Her eyes grow soft. “He must have been a great man.”

ANBU Weasel swallows roughly. “The best.”

-

Her mother is from Kumo and she inherits her affinity for lightning from her. Her father had been Konoha born but she has next to no luck getting as much as a fire going to her Kage’s endless amusement. 

_“Lightning and fire is practically the same thing! One just sparkles a bit more.”_ He’d said one evening as she wiggled down through the hole of snow leading into the cave with an armful of wood. _“Hell, I’m pretty damn useless at anything but wind but even I can get a fire going.”_

Of course, even lightning made fires but it was the principle of the thing. 

In Konoha it is just another thing that sets her apart. Fire is the main-element in Konoha, wind a close second. Earth release tended to crop up just about everywhere since it was so versatile but iron and different strange metal releases tended to belong exclusively to Suna and Iwa. Water belonged to Kiri and Lightning belonged to Kumo. 

Marriage happened, sex happened, illegitimate children carried to term. But Kumo tended to keep to themselves and Lightning was still fairly rare outside its walls save for the likes of Hatake who wielded all elements with an ease that made most turn tail and run even with him being only thirteen.

She had to resist the urge to tear out the page from the Bingo Book when she first saw it – Hatake was ridiculously adorable at this age. She had a hard time reconciling the picture of the pervert adult Hatake with the grouchy thirteen year old and even harder trying to imagine him as ANBU Wolf whose name was whispered in the halls long after he’d taken the roll of jounin-sensei. 

On the 24th of February Yoshino turns twenty-five and ANBU Weasel spends the evening at one of the trainings grounds to avoid the party thrown in her honor. As a seven-year-old she wouldn’t have been wanted there anyway and she figures even she deserves a night off from responsibilities.

She lets a spark of lightning wander between her fingers, looping it playfully as she gets it up to speed. Flicks it from index to middle to ring finger, from one hand to the other. 

It almost white and it contrasts beautifully against the dark of the night and against her skin. 

Mesmerizing. 

There’s a scuffle and she tilts her head without looking away from the spark and the Yondaime pulls himself up among the branches and seats himself beside her. 

“Shikaku is worried,” he tells her. “It’s nearly morning – the party ended two hours ago.” 

Her hand snap close around the spark, catching it in a cage of her fingers.

“Do you think we’re doing the right thing?” she asks.

“Are you asking me if given the chance of saving the life of my wife and son is doing the right thing?” 

“Fair.” She extinguishes the spark and tilts her head to look at him. “You don’t have to keep wearing the hat, you know?”

“But it makes it easier for you.” It isn’t a question. “You took care of my son – you are here because of him. The least I can do is keep a hat on.” There’s levity in his tone but she would have to be deaf to miss the genuine thankfulness behind the words. 

“It might not be him that’s being born.” 

The Yondaime tilts his head, his face angled up to watch the stars. “No,” he agrees. “It might not. But if we do this right he will never grow up to become the man your Kage was either.”

She’s startled to hear him say what she’s been thinking. 

“Will it make you love him any less?” Yondaime asks her.

“No,” she says honestly because she's had a lot of time to think and in the end she _understands_.

He tilts his head towards her and her ears warm at the gentle pride reflected in his eyes.

“I never said thank you, did I?” 

“I’m not doing this for you,” she reminds him. “I’m following the orders of my Kage.”

“My son.” And his voice is so soft.

She feels kinship with him in this moment – this man who will love her Kage unconditionally, just like her. 

“Tell me truthfully – how have you really been handling all of this?” He looks at her with those blue eyes and she sees another face entirely before she catches herself. “You never agreed to this and yet here you are – thrown into a house with strangers and forced to dredge up bad memories day after day. An adult trapped in the body of a child.” He reaches out, catching one of the braids she hadn’t bothered to pull back and tucking it behind her ear. 

He has kind eyes – eyes worthy of a man carrying the title of the Yondaime. 

“It is what it is,” she tells him and when he doesn’t remove his hand immediately she takes the moment to enjoy in the skin-on-skin contact she’d missed from long nights curled together with her Kage as he studies her.

In the beginning it had only been an excuse for warmth but it had become a comfort – entwined so completely with each other.

He smiles softly. “He was lucky to have you.” 

-

Sasuke is born in July and while she’s reasonably sure the baby looks something like the boy in picture her Kage had shoved into her face more than once she’s no expert on small pudgy little faces.

It’s also the first time she meets Itachi while she’s lingering at the side of the Yondaime with the excuse that he’d offered to keep an eye on her while her ‘Uncle Shikaku’ ran an errand in T&I. 

Mikoto and Fugaku both were well aware of who she was – all Clan Heads were, at least to some extent. How much she’d left entirely to the Yondaime but if they wanted to prevent the massacre they had to make sure the Uchihas knew they were trusted and respected by the village despite Danzo’s venomous roots crawling through the shadows.

What better way than to share a time-travelling ANBU-agent? 

He is younger than her by two years – five, maybe going on six, she isn’t entirely sure on the details. Small for his age while she was tall for hers, his eyes curious where he sat at the foot of his mother’s hospital bed, Sasuke feeding hungerly as the Yondaime chatted easily with Mikoto who looked tired but content.

ANBU Weasel raised a hand and gave it a little wave and his head tilted to the side as he raised his hand and gave a little wave back.

 _Weasel meet Weasel_ , she thinks to herself with a curl of her lips that is cautiously copied. 

-

She likes Itachi so sue her. 

The kid is adorable. And intelligent. After nearly a year of having more than one worm shoved into her face and being forced to play dumb around adults not in on the whole time-travel thing she’ll take it.

So, she asks Yoshino who insists on taking her shopping before letting her anywhere near the Uchiha compound. It’s nothing dramatic – just a gathering of clean shirts, hoodies and shorts to replace the ones she’s been running ragged on the training ground and two new bands to tie her braids back. 

They end up picking up some basic shinobi gear because Yoshino might be civilian but she married into a clan of shinobi and she gets it. 

-

Itachi doesn’t really know what to do with her, or anyone really, and he’s such a child genius that it’s almost painful to watch him try to get along with his classmates at the Academy. 

He’s five, started early, and the smallest in his class. The bullies are on him like sharks scenting blood. Which, their problem really – he’s young but Itachi is leaps ahead of them. 

It works for him and against him in this scenario.

She watches him from where she’s crouching on the roof before deciding to interfere as one of them hefts a rock with clear intention. 

Someone screams and a rock thuds to the ground as she lands between them.

“There you are Itacchin.” He blinks at her. “Ready to get going?” She shoves her hands into the pockets of her shorts, rocking back onto her heels with a grin as she takes advantage of her height to loom as she turns around. “Or were you going to _play_ with your classmates?”

She’s wearing a thigh-holster which are only allowed by those nearing graduation age which for another five years will be ten as the earliest and not the twelve her Kage had graduated to. It garners her a group of wary eyes.

Itachi, in her world, had graduated at seven but it was one of the things she’d really pressed on the Yondaime to change and he'd worked quick.

 _“Everything he did he did for love and Konoha ruined him,”_ her Kage tells her with a deep, aching regret.

“Well?” she says, meeting the eyes of the head bully and baring her teeth in an innocent grin.

-

She buys them two scoops of ice cream each and a warm cider to share and they eat it on a grassy hill near the training grounds.

“You could have dodged that hit.” Itachi looks content with his two scoops of chocolate while she’s regretting her choice of salty peanuts because someone had been seriously heavy handed with the salt.

“I could have,” she agrees as she half-heartedly scoops the melon onto the other in an attempt to lessen the impact on her taste buds. “But you saw his face, didn’t you?” It’s a rhetoric question – Itachi had seen it and he’d been a second from acting when she’d decked the kid flat. “He was so happy to have gotten a hit in, so sure of his superiority, and then just – _wham_.” 

She hasn’t had a decent fight in months – she’ll take what amusement she can and the bruised eye is a familiar kind of pain. 

“You know they were going to beat you up, right?” she checks, because kids had been strange for her even when she was a proper one and, again, _child genius_. “Or, well, try.” 

“It would have been foolish.” Itachi looks at her. “They stood no chance.”

“They are jealous because you’re better than them.” She gives up and pushes the salty peanut scoop clean off and into the grass where ants descend on it. “It’ll get better once you get your own team and you get up in the ranks – the higher the rank the more eccentric shinobi tends to be.” She bites into the melon with relish. “But until then,” she says as she swallows, “you’re going to have to dodge a few rocks or hope you get moved up and placed under an apprenticeship before getting your own proper team.” 

Apprenticeships were rare but with child geniuses like Itachi it was a good choice. Give them time to develop without actually sending them out into the field. 

If the Yondaime listened to her it was the best thing he could do with the kid. Plus, if they placed Itachi under the rank of someone famous enough it would make the Uchiha’s look good and trusted in the eyes of both the civilian and shinobi population.

She made a note to bring the angle up to the Yondaime’s attention once the whole Kyuubi-business had been dealt with. 

“Is that what you’re going to do?” Itachi asks curiously. 

“Probably,” she admits. She hadn’t talked it out with the ones in charge but the thought of doing another minimum of two years in the Academy made her seriously consider choosing the civilian life. 

She was pretty sure she’d make a good wood-worker. 

Or she could open a ramen shop – her Kage would have gotten a kick out of it. 

“Do you want to watch a movie?” she asks suddenly. “There’s a new one out – about a dog and a witch. Not too sure on the details but anything with a _witch_ has to be good, right?” 

To her surprise, Itachi agrees.

-

Itachi becomes a fixed presence in her life of adults after that. 

They make a habit of finding new strange foods to try – scouring through the districts of Konoha for rare fruits, squids and fishes and baked goods. Suna is famous for its spicy food and Kumo for the rare fruits that grow in the near constant rain and thunderstorms and they try anything they can get their hands on. 

The whirlpools that ravage Kiri brings in all sorts of strange creatures and on one memorable occasion they end up with an eel nearly three meter long which they carry home to Mikoto who laughs at them both as she relives them of the burden with an ease that reveals her past as a kunoichi. 

Fugaku is surprisingly patient with her presence and she wonders just what the Yondaime had been telling the two because he doesn’t protest when she steals away his son after training with a wave or drops by to have dinner with them and falls asleep on the couch half-cuddled with the kid. 

Itachi will never have a normal childhood – he’s too clever for that and she’s not a child anyway. They don’t play games or pretend and neither are the sort to pull pranks. But food, a pause from the reality of the shinobi world, a sense of normalcy – it did them both good.

They do end up training together because they’re shinobi – it’s what they do. She’s got some twenty years of experience on him but Itachi is good and he clearly enjoys finding ways to try and work around her. Quick to think on his feet and with an ingenuity that would one day mark him as the strongest genjutsu master there was before he succumbed to his sicken-

She drops her bowl of soup half-way to the table and Shikaku frowns as he kneels before her with questioning eyes. 

“I need to talk to Tsunade-sama.” 

-

It’s the beginning of October before she can blink.

She finds herself at the Uchiha compound under the watchful eye of Mikoto and Itachi who doesn’t understand what she’s doing there exactly but senses how antsy she is as he does his best to distract her. 

Fugaku spends more time at the Hokage tower than out of it and there are guards circulating the house constantly. 

On the night of the tenth she climbs through the window and onto the roof and it only takes minutes before Itachi is right there beside her, his hand grasping hers beneath the moon.

“One day I’m going to tell you everything,” she promises him as she stares fixedly towards the Hokage tower. “Every sordid little detail.”

He squeezes her hand and she realises she’s trembling.

“I know,” he says simply.

As the wail of the alarm breaks the silence of the night Itachi watches over his little brother and mother while ANBU Weasel tears towards the explosion of red hot chakra.

-

“KURAMA!” The fox is an old friend by now – she doesn’t even flinch when the violent chakra rips through her as those behind her stumbles to their knees. “DON’T LET HIM DO THIS TO YOU!” she shouts as the ancient being roars in pain and agony, red orbs warping with the sharingan forcing the mighty being under his control. “YOU CAN FIGHT THIS, I KNOW YOU CAN!” 

Chains keeps him down – looping desperately around the bijuu as Gamabunta and another large toad she doesn’t recognise struggles to keep him down. Katsuyu is everywhere, healing those hurt by the explosions or flattened under the force of the Kyuubi.

She feels hot – almost like she’s burning – and she touches her hand against her chest and feels the familiar pulse of demonic chakra against the palm of her hand. 

Remembers the red tearing through her before the blue light of the seal tore her away. 

“KURAMA!” she skids back from the force of his roar. “ONE DAY,” she grabs at the chakra and struggles forward as the chains pull him flat against the ground. “YOU WILL BEFRIEND A MAN WHO WILL CHALLENGE EVERYTHING YOU BELIEVE IN! HE WILL HAVE THE POWER TO REVOLUTIONIZE THE WORLD.” She stumbles as her skin tears open. “BUT ONLY WITH YOUR HELP!” 

A single red eye pins her in place, desperate and angry, and she winds her chakra with that from her own Kurama and slams her palms against his nose.

-

She wakes up in the hospital.

She’s wrapped up in layers of bandages and there’s an unimpressed Tsunade-sama checking her over. “We don’t know what you did,” the blonde says tersely when she blinks her eyes open. “But it pretty much fried you from the inside out.” 

“That,” she says with a cough, "was my Kage doing what he does best. Ever the hero." She scrubs at her face. "Did it work?” she asks as Tsunade prods a glass of cool water into her hands and helps her sit up.

Tsunade drops down on the edge of her bed. “You made a lot of ruckus, that’s for sure.” Tsunade smirks at her when she blinks. “The tiniest ANBU there ever was arrived onto the field, shouted nonsense at the fox and made a glorious red lightshow before slumping over in a dead faint on its nose.” Tsunade shakes her head, looking rather like she didn’t believe it. “It didn’t eat you – just, dropped you aside and demanded to be sealed into Minato and Kushina’s child.” 

She straightens. “So they’re both-“

“Alive, yes.” Tsunade’s face softens. “You changed history today.”

-

She crawls through the window, ignoring the flare of chakra from tense ANBU-agents who melts into the shadows on the command of their Yondaime. 

Kushina meets her eyes across the room and they’re the exact shape of her Kage, only green instead of blue. In many ways it’s far more painful to look into them than her husbands because blue eyes are a dime a dozen but the exact shape together verbal-tick at the end of her sentences makes her ache. 

But there’s another with her today and she looks at the bundle on Kushina’s chest, the little snuffle and gurgle from something with tufts of sunshine blond hair. 

She takes a step forward and then another to the new mother who smiles warmly at her. 

“You never told us his name,” Yondaime says from behind her. 

“Naruto,” she rasps. “Uzumaki Naruto.” 

“Hear that Minato?” Kushina grins at her husband. “You’re just going to have to take my name when we marry.” 

She reaches out, stroking a dark finger down a tiny whiskered cheek. 

“Would you like to hold him?” Kushina asks gently.

She nods, following the gentle directions on how to support the head and how to hold and settles carefully on the couch with her tiny Kage snuffling sleepily in her arms as the two new parents talk quietly.

There will be plenty of time for questions and explanations, for further planning and solutions. 

She smiles at the tiny baby that will one day become the Rokudaime of Konoha and draws him close, pressing her lips against his tiny ear. 

_“My name is Blue D.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The original plan wasn't to post this but her story stuck with me and it's been bugging me so now I'm uploading it. Maybe her voice just needed to be heard? I'm not sure. 
> 
> There are so many amazing stories with main-characters being thrown this and there in time so this was born because I enjoy exploring the characters in the margins. Those who become something _more_ because circumstances demand it of them. Because of loyalty, because of love.
> 
> It could end here - looped into a perfect circle of death and life. But I'm thinking of doing a short gathering of maybe 3-5 chapters depending on things because her story isn't done yet.
> 
> She still has more to tell.
> 
> Cheers!


	2. Growing Pains

ANBU Weasel isn’t a bleeding heart kind of person. 

She’s ANBU. She’s assassinated children on behest of her village and she’s done so without hesitation. It’s always mercy kill, never drawing it out, best done in the sleep if she can get away with it. But it isn’t something she balks at because it is part of the responsibility she accepted at fourteen when she knelt down to accept the mask. 

Some ANBU makes the request to not kill children. Weasel knows that Ox is one of them, Panther and Wolf, too. 

Knows that she _can_. 

Knows that she _won’t_. 

She rationalises it as such: by accepting the responsibility onto herself she can make sure it is nearly always quick and painless. It takes a certain kind of character to kill children, after all, and she understands why she’s requested more than most for this kind of assignment. 

It doesn’t clear her reputation any among her fellow ANBU but the Hokage knows and for Weasel that is very well enough.

She doesn’t know how many child assassinations she’s completed during the years. She is twenty-four, turning twenty-five as Konoha levels to the ground and after that it’s just her and her Kage.

The average ANBU span around eight years of active duty before they’re either made jounin or rank out as squad leaders for their own team another two years and then forcefully benched as per regulations. Some retire but they are few.

ANBU Weasel is at the point of fourteen years of active duty when her Kage sends her back in time.

-

“Come here little one – just like that,” a giggle, “gosh you’re adorable like this.” The soon to be two-year-old practically falls into her lap and she grabs him beneath his arms and gives him a little lift, tiny feet wobbling briefly on her thighs before she steadies them with a bit of chakra and she gives his cheek a kiss, turning her cheek obediently to the wet lips that press against it with a triumphant little _mwah!_

“Blu-Blu,” he gurgles and she swears she feels her heart melting right there in the middle of her chest.

“Na-Na,” she coos back and can’t resist giving his nose a peck and it wrinkles adorably as he practically goes cross-eyed. “If Sasuke is even half as cute as you are I have no idea how Itachi ever leaves that house,” she confides in him as he reaches to grasp one of her braids with another giggle.

Toddler Sasuke had apparently decided that she was the E-N-E-M-Y and the mere sight of her tended to throw him into a right fit so she’d been temporarily banned from the Uchiha compound to give them some peace of mind. 

She doesn’t really mind – she tended to keep out of the Nara compound for similar reasons. But it did mean that the evenings were quieter, parents exhausted and her sort of awkwardly trying to keep out of the way and not accidentally wake the grouchy kid.

“Blu-Blu?” 

She startles – hadn’t even realised she’d zoned out – and gives the little blond cutie an apologetic grin and a raspberry on his belly that makes him shriek with laughter until he’s panting and gives and adorable little yawn.

“Just look at you,” she murmurs fondly as she touches the little blond spikes and whiskered cheeks, blue eyes blinking up adorably. “You are loved, little one,” she tells him as she draws her knees up and shifts him so that his tiny back rests against her thighs as she gently strokes her hand over his hair in slow, repetitive motions and he gives a another yawn, blinking. “So very loved.” 

She hums, something slow she’s overheard Yoshino sing to Shikamaru. 

Keeps humming long after he’s fallen asleep.

-

Her entire time on a genin team is a farce – missions being registered in her name while she’s deep in the corridors of T&I alongside Yamanaka Inoichi and Morino Ibiki. 

Minato once tries to ask about her old teams but what she’d had with them was gone. 

Her team is dead, her sensei **dead**.

There is nothing in them in the innocent eyes that stares at her oddly when they catches her gazing just a tad too long at the Academy grounds and she isn’t the Blue D they would have shared teams with either. 

She does not owe them this information and Minato gives her a long look when she remains mum on the subject. 

She never does get apprenticed and she’s never given a proper sensei but she’s re-introduced to Shiranui Genma who gives her a wary look upon meeting her as Ibiki drops her down by the back of her shirt before him.

She might have been grinning just a tad too widely.

Genma had been her contact person during her first two years at ANBU – put in charge of making sure she had what it take to deal with it mentally as they put her through the rigorous training that sometimes meant weeks of little more than cat-naps and barely a mouth-fil of food that strained their minds to the max. 

She’d slept on the floor of his bed and she knew exactly where he stored his alcohol and porn. 

Genma is, primarily, a kenjutsu user and she has no swords to wield. But he’s clever and she’s atypical for a preteen in flip-flops and hoodies and twenty-eight years of extra memories. 

They make it work and he says nothing as his Icha Icha starts disappearing by the volume. 

-

“She looks so young, Raidou,” Genma says that night as he half-slumps over his boyfriend, voice muffled against his chest. “But she’s older than me, can you believe that? Thirty-something-years-old and stuck in the body of a scrawny preteen.”

“Sounds kinda hellish,” Raidou muses. “No sex, no alcohol and forced to listen to you?” 

He squawks in protest when Genma pinches his thigh without looking up. 

-

Orochimaru in this time still has a good reputation and both Jiraiya and Tsunade had a hard time accepting her word for it until they had been confronted with cold, hard fact. It was hard to throw a blind eye to mutilated corpses in the underground network running through Konoha – the same underground network Danzo used to run his Ne business. 

It spoke well of their character, she decides as she sits on the village wall and watches the large snail, toad, snake and monkey battle it out in the distance. 

Danzo’s roots digs deep through the village and even ANBU Weasel isn’t sure just how far his reach had been as Konoha crumbled to dust.

“There was speculations about him being the one who supplied Orochimaru with children to experiment on,” she tells Shikaku and Yoshino one evening. “At least a good chunk of them. Any that didn’t fit the requirements of Ne would be traded to the hands of the Snake Sannin and ultimately disposed of or made _better_.”

She tells them of an arm filled with sharingan and old grudges – a whisper in the Sandaime’s ear. 

It’s a hard pill to swallow. Danzo here had been a trusted advisor of the Sandaime and the Yondaime was still reasonable new to his position. Danzo's word still carried weight to those not in on her situation and even among those who is she’s met with scepticism until it can't be denied. 

Yondaime very publically challenges the whispers aimed to undermine the Uchiha clan and puts time and money into the Konoha Military Police Force led under the hand of Uchiha Fugaku himself. 

Meanwhile ANBU are the ones put in charge of digging up evidence. 

“Ne was everywhere and nowhere,” she tells ANBU Gorilla after the woman corners her at one of the training grounds. “Incorporated into our very system. There are seals on their tongues that can be seen if you channel chakra against it but Danzo was through. Their best tell is how absolutely dense they are to emotions.” 

ANBU tended to harbour the best of the worst – those that looked better burnt with their masks on than their faces than plastered over the pages of the Bingo Book. Shinobi by rule weren’t necessarily good people but ANBU was infamous for a reason and their masks protected that, allowing them do to the dirty deeds without carrying the repercussions into their daily life. 

ANBU Weasel knows how frustratingly little it is to go on as ANBU Gorilla linger by her side. 

“There is one boy with wood release who you should be able to figure out but the only Ne members I know past him are still too young.”

It does get her thinking about Sai who was a year or so older than her Kage – wonders if he’s already in the grasp of Danzo or if he was still in one of the orphanages.

 _“I never liked the bastard,”_ her Kage tells her where he’s floating on his back in the water with her seated on the surface beside him. _“But he deserved better than what he got.”_

-

Blue makes chunin on the eve of Shimura Danzo’s execution. 

She has the corner view right beside ANBU Cat who hovers by her shoulder – not in on the secret and unsure on the exact details of a eleven-year-old being given front-row seats to the death of one of their (former) honoured Council Members. 

She hadn’t actually met Yugao until she was way into her second year as an ANBU but she’d been one of the best even then. The former student of ANBU Wolf and who’d claimed the title of Commander before hitting her twenties. Blue had only seen her without mask once but she’s pretty sure the other one is just a year or two older than her body – fourteen, maybe fifteen. 

Her reputation didn’t make her any less adorable as a gangly teenager – a strange sort of stretched out long-limberness that makes Blue’s mouth twitch.

Danzo’s death in itself is far from dramatic. 

A cup of tea with his old friend Hiruzen who looks tired long before Danzo slumps over on the table. 

All official records will read it as nothing more than a heart-attack. 

From there it’s a matter of working quickly – to remove the seal on his chest binding the Ne to silence as ANBU floods the underground system.

-

Despite the suspicious amount of toddlers suddenly in her life ANBU Weasel manages to spend a decent amount of time for training between dodging out of the academy and getting hauled away to confirm or deny any of the information she’d brought with her. 

With the Kyuubi-thing out of the picture the next enemy was the very roots of the village and she has had front-row seats to seeing the Konoha Council dismantled in favour of a rotating system of people vetoed by the people of Konoha after the death of Danzo.

It isn’t perfect. 

The shinobi half was nearly entirely made up by high-ranking clan members, more often than not clan heads themselves. There were exceptions – like Tsume and Choza who had never been interested in politics. The Inuzuka preferred to govern themselves and tended to find ways to work around laws and restrictions that didn’t suit them. The Akimichi and the Aburame, to an extent, was content as long as the rule was made for the better of the village. 

The civilian half had been pickier – they didn’t like having to deal with the shinobi half and there was a reason as to why there were shopping districts and bars geared exclusively to the shinobi population. 

A drunk and angry shinobi was a sure death sentence to any civilian in their path. 

The Yondaime manages to lure out those stubborn enough to dig their heels in and Blue is particularly delighted by a young nurse by the name Kurami who looks Hiashi dead in the eye and calls him out on the absolute idiocy that is the cursed bird seal and proceeds to dismiss his argument entirely on the fact that _anyone who thinks sealing half of their family under the constant threat of torture solves anything is an idiot._

If she wasn’t stuck in her body she would have done her best to charm Kurami into her bed for a night or two. 

She’s entirely enamoured, she admits it. 

Mikoto becomes a trusted ear on the new council and her ability to manoeuvre around the best gains her respect from both the civilian and shinobi halves.

Occasionally when Blue drops off Itachi or to stay over for the night she finds Mikoto and Kushina hunched over piles of papers with their two sons napping soundly together in a shared crib.

-

Blue actually manages to be in the village on the day of Itachi’s graduation – top of the class, apprenticed to Senju Tsunade herself since two years back. 

He looks happy, Blue decides where she’s swinging her leg in the tree. He’s wearing a long-sleeved black shirt with the Uchiha symbol on the back of it but there’s a band around his left upper-arm with the symbol for APPRENTICE HEALER standing out in stark red. 

It suits him. 

He’s greeted by both his parents, a bouncing cousin Blue is pretty sure is Uchiha Shisui and a ridiculously adorable baby brother of some four years. 

ANBU Weasel, as he’d been before she took the mask, would never come to be in this world. 

Blue doesn’t know the exact details but it had been Tsunade herself who’d sort of scooped the Uchiha genius up for herself during the months where she’d been dealing with his illness, caught in the very early stages, and he’d taken to her like a duck to water. 

According to ANBU Gorilla Tsunade had just sort of waltzed into the meeting regarding Itachi’s future apprenticeship, slammed down the necessary papers and waltzed right back out.

Blue isn’t sure what’s more adorable – the little pig-tails he’d started wearing in copy of his teacher or the doctor’s coat he’s still swimming in. 

“What’s this world like compared to yours?” Itachi asks her as he leans against her shoulder on top the Hokage Mountain to watch the lights below them. 

She never asks how he figures it out – he’s too clever not to and she’s never made an effort to hide it from him.

Hums as she takes a bite of the crisp red apple he angles up to her.

“It’s… happier,” she says distantly as she gazes out over the village. 

It’s spring and the air smells like cherry blossoms. She’s finally getting hair in places where it’s supposed to be and while her breasts had never been more than a handful it was different from the strange flatness of a child’s body and they were finally growing.

“It must be strange to be back here when everyone you know is dead. To look around you and see strangers in faces that were once close to you.”

She tilts her head to look at him and finds intelligent eyes looking back. 

“It is,” she admits. “But they would have been dead even if I hadn’t been sent back.” 

Even her Kage. 

Kurama’s chakra had been disorted and siphoned from a botched attempt to draw the fox from him. The old grouch had refused – struggling every step of the way, the two clinging to each other in a way that had made the statue howl, eyes rolling madly as the other bijuu responded to their sibling’s distress.

They had fled in the resulting explosion but she’d been half-dead long before her knees hit the ground, her arm thrown over his shoulder, and his wounds weren’t healing. 

Drawing the seal in the mud had been a last resort. 

One last chance burdened on her shoulders. 

“Were we friends in your world too?” Itachi asks, turning the last half of the apple slowly in his hands as he looks out over the village. 

“No.” She nabs the apple from his hands and takes another large bite and he stares as she crams the now skin-less apple into the palm of his hand. “Never even met you.” 

She feels the way he presses just a bit closer and she understands.

She wouldn’t have wanted to be compared to a dead person either.

-

ANBU Weasel graduates at ten, makes chunin at eleven and jounin at thirteen. 

Shikaku is waiting for her outside the Yondaime’s office as she shrugs on the dark green vest that had become popular some two years earlier after abandoning the grey ones worn during the Second Shinobi World War. The Uzumaki symbol, red and bold, stands out starkly on her back and it’s only a matter of time before it will be standardized in Konoha.

“Congratulations,” he tells her as he pushes away from the wall he’d been leaning against. 

She’s a gangly long-limbered thing in shorts, t-shirt and straw-sandals and she has no doubt she looks ridiculous in the over-sized vest that marks her new status in Konoha but he looks nothing but proud as he clasps her shoulder and pulls her into one-armed hug.

Blue is too old to want or need a new family but she’s been with the Nara’s for some six-years-now and as far as the world is concerned her father had been Shikaku’s half-brother, a bastard who’d died without being claimed. 

Her mother had been the third cousin of the Raikage and Blue is named for his cousin, Blue B, the former jincuuriki of the Hachibi. She has her mother’s colouring, her hair, but the blue eyes and flat nose are entirely her father’s.

She looks nothing like the man with his dark eyes, tan skin, straight hair and sharp nose but she pushes up ever so slightly on her toes and squeezes back all the same with an arm around his neck.

Yoshino and a half-dozing Shikamaru greets them both over a table of her favourite dishes when they step inside and she trades her sandals for the orange slippers gifted to her in the name of Shikamaru during her second year with them as Shikaku bends down to press a kiss to his wife’s cheek. 

Shikamaru perks up at the sight of her, stretching his arms up demandingly and she lifts him up as she simultaneously folds down on the small pillow and he sinks contently into her lap – completely boneless.

He’s a quiet child but no-less demanding and the tufty deer left on the pillow beside his mother is a trusty companion seldom left behind. 

“I’m meeting with Itachi and Sasuke at the park tomorrow,” she shares with him as he looks up with clever eyes. “Naruto might come too if Itacchin manages to lure Kakashi along.” 

In her world Hatake Kakashi had joined ANBU after the death of his sensei but here he had reached the rank of tokubetsu-jounin and remained a steady-fast presence in the life of his godson who adored him and his many dogs. He was more often than not the designated babysitter for the tuft of blond sunshine and it wasn’t unusual to spot the two of them with a hoard of dogs. 

“Sakura too?” Shikamaru peers up at her with a look that says _she better_ and Blue smothers a grin and gives him a solemn nod. “Sakura too,” she agrees. 

“And Shikamaru.”

“And Shikamaru.”

She presses a kiss to his small forehead after tucking him into bed after dinner while the two elder Nara’s clean up with a clatter of porcelain and murmur of low voices and she pauses by her room before making her way downstairs. 

On the bed are the gifts she’d received – black pants, proper ninja sandals, a netted mesh, a kodachi that could be attached horizontally along her lower back and a t-shirt.

The t-shirt is a simple thing, cotton grey with the sleeves folded nearly all the way up to the shoulders. There was nothing particular about it save for the bold circle placed at the center of the upper chest with its wavy lines - the clan sign worn by the Nara’s.

Blue shrugs out of her vest and shirt and leaves the shorts where they fall on the ground. Pulls the pants on and ties up the ankles with a familiarity that is aching. Binds her budding chest up and pulls the mesh over it followed by the grey t-shirt before letting the vest settle over it. Shakes her braids out and ties them up high with a broad blue band and knots the Konoha hitai-ate to her bare arm.

She finds the two elder Nara’s on the back porch.

It's dark but fireflies flitter around the grazing deer in the lush, dense forest that make out of the better part of the Nara compound. 

It's a far cry from the small one-room apartment with a single window that had been her home for many years.

They pull her down between them and Shikaku pours them a cup of sake each.

“You’ve been with us for six years now,” Yoshino murmurs softly into her ear. “Shikamaru adores you and you might not be tied by blood but you’re his sister in all ways that count. We thought it was about time we made it official.”

“You’ll always have a home here,” Shikaku says firmly.

Blue is too old to want or need a new family but it seems she went and acquired one anyway.

-

Itachi stares at her chest for a long while when she meets up with him the next day – long enough that Fugaku clears his throat and Mikoto smothers a laugh when her son goes pink cheeked. 

“I’m still Blue D,” she tells him as she bends down to haul little Sasuke up on her free hip. “But in all ways that count I’m now a daughter of the Nara’s and this one’s official big sister.” 

“Already my sister, Blue-nee,” Shikamaru grouches as he surrenders his deer to Sasuke’s hands. 

She plants a kiss on the crown of his head in response and then on Sasuke’s because he gives her a pouty look of betrayal for not being immediately included. 

“Congratulations,” Mikoto says warmly and Fugaku inclines his head in agreement because they’re some of the few who knows her background and her position with the Nara’s and understands what it means for her to be claimed officially.

“Were you ever adopted in your world?” Itachi asks as he keeps a careful eye on Shikamaru and Sasuke wandering hand in hand just a bit before them after leaving the Uchiha compound. 

“No,” she tells him honestly. “I was a grouchy and surly child dead-set on becoming a brilliant kunoichi to get revenge on my parents before my ANBU-contact beat it out of me. I wasn’t very interested in being adopted.” 

“ANBU-contact?” Itachi asks.

“First months of ANBU is brutal,” she tells him because he wouldn’t know in this world and ANBU was a secretive business. “We’re put in contact with someone who keeps an eye on us to make sure we can handle it.”

He makes a noise of interest and she hides a grin. 

In a somewhat ironic twist the kid had gotten himself interested in the department of mental health and Tsunade-sama had only encouraged it. He was eleven now, two years shy or the thirteen he’d been when he’d eradicated his clan, his parents and tortured his brother to the point of insanity. 

She’s promises herself that once he reaches the age of fourteen she’s going to tell him everything. 

Kakashi is already at the park and the blond wiggly thing in his arms doubles in movement until he’s let down and tearing across the distance and she bends down to catch him as he throws his arms around her neck and rises into a happy twirl with a laugh.

“Blu-Blu!” Naruto giggles as she bends down to plant a wet kiss on his cheek. 

“Na-Na!” she echoes with the same excitement as she turns her cheek to allow him to clumsily place one on hers.

Shikamaru and Sasuke gives them identical long-suffering looks when she blows a raspberry on his tummy – lost in their own world of squeaky excitement.

Itachi turns his head when Kakashi sidles up beside him, the hounds at his heels immediately welcomed by small eager hands.

Kakashi raises an eyebrow. “Nara?” he asks with a touch of bemusement as the larger dogs accidentally pushes Sasuke down on his butt where his lap is immediately claimed by the smallest of the pack who wastes no time to assault his face with a series of licks that makes him giggle helplessly. 

“Apparently so.” 

Shikamaru practically folds himself around the neck of the large bulldog, scratching at the disproportionately small floppy ears. 

“Is she aiming to make it back into ANBU?” Kakashi asks in interest as he spies a small pink-haired figure pelting towards them on bare feet. 

Itachi frowns. “I’m not sure,” he admits. 

Shikamaru perks up on the bulldog and Sasuke manages to wobble back onto his feet, a small big-eared dog pressed against his chest.

Kakashi steps forward and gets an arm around her midriff before she trips into them and Sakura grins toothily where she dangles half-slumped over it. 

-

“I don’t think so,” she says with a frown when Itachi asks her about it that evening. “Yondaime-sama had a copy of my mask made and hung in his office in recognition of what ANBU Weasel made in the service of the village. I think it was his way of telling me that it’s never meant to be worn again,” she admits. 

Itachi feels something loosen in his shoulders.

“And I mean, six years as a jounin and I can take my own genin team – isn’t that cool? Could you imagine me with a little army of kiddlets?” 

Itachi mentally tallies the years and gives her a long suspicious look.

-

At fifteen, during an A-rank mission in Ame, Blue meets the two leaders of Akatsuki during a mission gone side-ways. 

She has about a second to recognise the sizzling explosion notes beneath the open jacket and the jack-toothed grin of the woman followed by a dawning realization of _well, fuck_ before she’s abruptly snagged by the back of her vest and pulled violently backwards as the air becomes alive with papers arcs.

In a normal situation Blue would have broken something of the person that flattens her to the ground but she’d recognise that brush of orange hair anywhere and she stares over his shoulder at the wide paper wings of Konan as she smothers the explosion with arcs upon arcs of papers. 

It’s possible that she forgets how to breathe for the moment it takes for her brain to make sense of the situation. 

Pein, Yahiko, Nagato - whoever he is at this time – slumps against her shoulder with a breath of relief until she gets enough of her wits back to break his nose clean and roll out from beneath him when he curses and automatically rears back.

Konan folds her paper wings against her back, something curious in her amber eyes as Blue looks between the two of them cautiously in a half-crouch she slowly straightens from.

“When Jiraiya-sensei said to keep an eye out for any wandering Nara’s with blue eyes I didn’t think he meant for us to keep you from blowing your arms off,” Konan comments as she absently reaches out and gives her companion a pat on the shoulder in consolation.

He snaps his nose in place and with a touch of healing chakra fixes it right up with a little crinkle that makes Blue blink.

“Unless he went and became psychic with age,” Pein/Yahiko/Nagato points out dryly. 

She zeroes on him as she evaluates the situation. “Who are you?” 

He raises an eyebrow and exchange a look with Konan.

“I thought you were supposed to know that,” he points out suspiciously which meant that Jiraiya had been sharing information that she wasn’t certain was clever to share. 

They're young, she thinks as she looks at them, only in their mid-twenties and it’s been some eight years since she got thrown back in time so it isn’t impossible that Akatsuki had gone and changed its tune with Jiraiya’s intervention.

Akatsuki hadn’t revealed itself to be the bijuu stealing group that had turned the world on its head until another six years and then properly nine years in the future with the kidnapping of the Kazakage.

If they had been warned away from Madara it might be enough to change the course of history and keep them as the rebel group they had been instead of getting them into the whole rule-the-world business. 

She waves a hand. “I know who she is but who are _you_?” She puts careful emphasis on the last word.

Something dark flitters through his eyes and he gives her a long look through dark eyes as Konan folds her wings away into her body with a careful roll of her shoulders at the shift of weight as she steps up beside her companion.

“You can call me Pein,” he answers finally. 

“Alright,” she agrees and shifts her stance into something falsely relaxed. “So why exactly were you looking for me?” 

-

Pein and Konan wants information, which doesn’t surprise her, but it’s not the kind of information she expects them to seek considering the way things had gone in her world. 

“Why do you want to know about him?” she asks as she bites down into the fish with relish. 

She’s a decent cook but Pein is apparently some sort of genius. Even the tea is good and she loathes tea – considers it little more than warm bitter water. 

How he’d made it taste fruitish with a depth of warm oats she hadn’t the faintest. 

The small clearing they'd brought her to is ideal for camp and the shield above them kept the rain away. One of the two had even bothered to dry up the majority of the grass which was a relief after three weeks of being constantly wet from head to toe.

“Ten years ago we were approached by a man who claimed the name of a dead man,” Pein tells her as he throws the remains of his fish onto the fire. “Uchiha Madara.” 

“We think he might have been working with Hanzo.” 

Blue recounts what she remembers of the Ame civil war with a thoughtful hum. 

Hanzo had been the catalyst to their friend’s death, her Kage had told her, and he had been working with the leader of Root who in turn had been working with Madara.

It wasn’t even a stretch to consider he might have had something to do with this as well and she slants a look at the ringed eyes of the man, implanted by Uchiha Madara himself. 

No, it wasn’t such a long-stretch at all, she thinks. 

Had the man known who did it to him when he accepted Madara into the ranks of Akatsuki under the guise of Tobi? She didn’t know. The internal conflicts of the group hadn’t exactly been on her mind as Konoha levelled to dust. 

“Jiraiya didn’t tell you anything?” she checks as she carefully considers the situation.

Konan and Pein are dangerous enemies to make and she doesn't know exactly what Jiraiya had been telling them either to make them to seek her out in person.

She doesn't like not knowing - it gave them the advantage and her awkwardly caught wrong-footed.

“He said he didn’t want us to get into something we’d regret.” Konan leans forward and Blue pauses with her cup half-raised at the intensity of her eyes. “If he had anything to do with Yahiko’s death we deserve to know.” 

Blue puts her cup down on the ground, aware of the two watching her as she drums her fingers against her knee in thought. 

“Alright,” she agrees slowly after a long moment. “But I want to come with you when you find him,” she says, meeting their eyes with a sharp grin and lidded eyes. “I have some unfinished business of my own.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Information heavy chapter but I needed to get things rolling so this was me mauling through some of the changes to lay the foundation for what kind of Konoha we're dealing with.
> 
> So this fic now has a dash of pairing to go with the story which is unusual for me but I think it'll be an interesting spin to bring you all along for. I really liked Pein and Konan in canon but I seldom happen upon them in fanfics for some strange reason? And when I do it's usually Konan being bashed or forgotten for someone to shag up with Pein or her written down to nothing more than a sex object. Even in Akatsuki fics in general she's treated pretty badly as is often the case with female characters. 
> 
> A lot is changing - just having the Yondaime alive is a major cause for Konoha's evolution and from what I understand from canon KMPF is never mentioned after the death of the Uchiha's so they remain a thing here. And without Danzo working against them in the shadows, Mikoto on the new council and Itachi apprenticed to one of the famed Sannin the Uchiha's are incorporating into the village in a way they were never allowed to in canon.
> 
> The Akatsuki is harder to deal with because Konan and Pein still lost Yahiko, in a sense, though I'm twisting around in the situation a bit here because that's what I do. They're a bit harder to pin in character since this is 10 years before they're introduced canon and without Madara's influence and they're both pretty young still. But I have an idea for what I want to do with them and Blue as we haul this fic along. 
> 
> Regarding her name: Kumo is a curious village and a lot of the characters are either named for the roman alphabet (A, B, C) or characteristics like Samui and the like. So she doesn't have a clan name but was literally named for A's cousin Blue B. The English letters and words I figure can be looked at as remnants of an 'old language' or maybe something spoken by the first Raikage. It's not actually important for the story but, well. 
> 
> It's actually Friday and I'm going to spend the day on the computer with the new Stardew Valley BETA because that's apparently my life now. 
> 
> Cheers!


	3. Itachi

For a long time ANBU Weasel’s life is simple. 

Haruno tells her to keep her Kage alive and that’s what she does until her body is blown to bits and only sheer stubbornness keeps her alive as her Kage drags her through the forest until they collapse in the ruin of their village. 

Three years spent seeing only a handful humans, never lingering, constantly running. 

They sleep tightly curled around each other during cold nights. Eating, bathing, sleeping - constantly in the other’s space. Any sense of modesty is thrown out the window during the first five months and they seek comfort in each other and sticks tight even when anger reigns and blood is drawn.

ANBU Weasel loves her Kage even when he hates her, loves him long before he falls asleep with his head on her chest beneath the moon with dark shadows beneath his eyes and a restlessness that never goes away, even in sleep.

He’s young, she thinks, eight years her junior. 

Lonely – always so lonely. 

She’s never enough to sooth that from him because he lost infinitely more than she did with the destruction of their village. 

ANBU Weasel who hadn’t kept in contact with her genin team after making ANBU, fading away into the shadow ranks with pitiful ease and little regret. 

ANBU Weasel who killed children in the middle of the night and who’s watched warily even by those of her own as she reaches eight years of service, nine years of service, ten, eleven before Konoha crumbles to nothing. 

She’s ANBU, she exists for the good of the village and her Kage and suddenly there is no village only a seventeen-year-old boy entrusted to her safety. 

_She_ who had made a career of **murder.**

-

Itachi turns fourteen in June but she drags out the truth all the way to her (second) sixteenth birthday until she can’t deny him anymore. 

She’s seen Itachi grow from a boy painfully out of sorts with the people around him to a trusted medic-nin always a step or two behind Tsunade. 

Tsunade who never leaves Konoha in this world but sticks through and gets help and then makes something never before seen of the Konoha medical corps and the village hospitals. 

It’s everything that had been hinted when she took the seat of the Godaime Hokage and then so much more because she has the time to focus on her true passion instead of juggling village politics while constantly being undermined by Danzo after years focused on rebuilding after the invasion.

A better hospital, better field-medics, meant that more shinobi got back alive, got back whole, and while other villages thinned out Konoha was only growing in strength with Danzo and Orochimaru truly dead and gone. 

And Itachi is right in the middle of it – a genius with front-row seats to a once in a life-time evolution.

There’s a surety in this teenager with the kanji for HEALER in red on the chest of his doctor coat, always with a clipboard under one arm and directing men and women much older than him with hard earned respect. 

This boy who had been given a chance to heal instead of kill and who thrived in it. 

Itachi is her friend in a world of familiar strangers – evidence of the change she’d brought with her on orders of her Kage. 

Every day Mikoto is there to greet her at the dining table, every day she’s there to watch Sasuke and Naruto tumble together on the playground with grins she knows that she’s done a difference.

Her world is gone – the people long dead before her Kage even entertains the idea of forcing her back in time.

_This world is not her world._

She understands this and it’s a distinction she makes a point of when he asks her about it. 

Her world, her world, her world. 

Maybe it’ll mean nothing, maybe it’ll mean everything. 

Maybe, in some ways, it had been cruel of her to befriend this boy because it would always lead to the truth. 

-

Her nose breaks with a crunch and Shisui is lucky that she’s anticipated him hunting her down because it’s the only thing that keeps her from frying him alive as she curbs the violent impulse into a sizzle of lightning that she bleeds out through the soles of her feet.

She meets the spinning sharingan with blank eyes, her body language open and relaxed even with blood gushing from both nostrils and staining the front of her shirt. 

He shoves her up against the tree and bark digs sharply into her back.

“What did you tell him!?” Shisui snarls.

He’s the same age as her body but they had been in different classes at the Academy and while she’d met him once or twice through Itachi he’d never liked her. 

She is twenty-eight-years-old at six and she’s told she’s an eerie child. 

It gets better when her body starts catching up to her mental age but Shisui meets her when he’s still young and unlike Itachi he picks up on her offness and reacts to it.

Consequently, despite both of them being friends with Itachi, their interactions are few. 

She doesn’t blame him – he’s young and he loves Itachi.

Itachi who had gone missing after she’d- 

No, she thinks, she doesn’t blame him and she feels the way he trembles, struggling to keep himself together with a white knuckled fist curled into her shirt.

“Tell me he’s going to be okay,” Shisui whispers with something like desperation seeping through the cracks of his voice. _“Tell me he’ll be alright.”_

“I’m sorry,” she tells him earnestly. 

-

Blue spends a week sleeping in Genma’s apartment to allow the double bruises around her eyes to fade to nothing. 

Genma is out on a mission but she toasts in rum with Raidou and they eat enough ice cream to empty out his freezer, makes several botched attempts of copying Gai’s famous pie, hides the results in more ice cream and toasts Genma the following Tuesday with a whisky and vanilla ice cream mix they’re both going to end up regretting. 

“Please tell me you’ve at least changed the underwear you’re in,” Genma says with exasperation as he drops a bag of something that smells of grease and salt before them. 

“I thought you’d recognise your own boxers,” Blue greets him as she drags the closest container to her.

Genma eyes the yellow boxers with little dragons patterned on them. “It was too much to hope for an unfortunate shared sense of taste, was it?” he sighs.

Raidou mutters something in his sleep, snorting into her shoulder and she gives him a little shove while Genma drops down on the other side of him with a container of shrimps that he keeps for himself and another with chicken that he shoves into the hands of his boyfriend as he blinks awake. 

“’morning Gen,” Raidou mumbles as he reaches over to snag a shrimp and crams it into his mouth.

“It’s two p.m.” Genma informs them both dryly as he nabs the closest bottle of whisky for himself. “Heathens, the both of you.”

-

“So, you going to tell me what’s been bugging you?” Genma asks her two days later when they’re both sprawled out on training ground thirty-two. “Don’t think I didn’t hear about your tail’s sudden disappearance.” 

There’s a piece of his sword lodged into the tree above her and the ground had been charred black by a clash of lightning and fire that had left them both covered in soot that clung to their sweaty skin. She’s got a new nick by the side of her left eye that’s definitively going to scar and he’s cradling a hand of broken fingers from where she’d slammed her heel down to make him loose the grip of his sword.

The Uchiha massacre had been kept on a strictly need-to-know basis even among those aware of her secret. Other than her the only ones who knew the truth were the Yondaime, Tsunade, Kushina, Mikoto, Fugaku and now Itachi.

“It’s something he needs to figure out on his own,” she tells him, stretching carefully with a wince. “Besides, I’m pretty sure I’m the last person he wants to see now.”

Genma groans as he pulls himself into a sitting position, pawing his pockets until he finds a new senbon that he rolls comfortably into his mouth. 

“That bad, huh?” he mutters with a grimace, carding fingers through his sweaty hair. “You sure that doesn’t make you just the person he needs to see right now?” She turns her head to look at him. “I mean, you’ve stuck with him for years now.” The senbon clicks against his teeth. “Whatever you told him can’t be that bad if you could see past it and give him a chance.” 

-

Her world, her world, her world. 

She makes the distinction to him early.

-

 _I’m sorry_ , she thinks as he slips his limp hand from unresisting fingers and disappear into the night with eyes already warping into something terrible. _I’m so sorry._

-

Blue doesn’t tell anyone about her meeting with Pein and Konan and they must be doing her the same favour because no one approaches her about conspiring with the future Kage of Amegakure and his second-in-command. 

Of course her world had never found out about Hanzo’s death and had believed Ame to be caught in an endless tumble of Civil War – a truth that hadn’t been revealed until the day Pein levelled Konoha to the ground for the first time and then proceeded to bring everyone back to life in behest of her Kage.

In this world Ame is still caught in a Civil War but whether Hanzo still lives or not she does not know.

She’d never picked up a summoning contract in her world or this but either Pein and Konan does and she does get into the habit of folding origami to hide the sudden influx of the little folded creations carrying encrypted messages from the two that appear at the strangest of places (most memorably she’d woken up to one carefully balanced on the tip of her nose).

Shikamaru is strangely fascinated by the figures – especially the little stars he gathers into a jar and keeps by the side of his bed and she starts adding bits and pieces of facts on them that she picks up during missions and scouring through the libraries.

She’s a bit flummoxed as to where his interest in space and stars blossoms from but he’s eight and when he isn’t napping he’s got his nose buried in the hand drawn book of starry skies she’d picked up from a cute peddler in Suna.

Yoshino is fairly amused by the entire thing – especially with Shikaku’s muttered complains after finding that the underside of his shogi pieces had been decorated by corresponding stars. 

-

Here is the thing: 

ANBU Weasel loves her Kage more than anything.

She will not see him dead a second time.

Uchiha Madara is the one who kills him.

The logic is as easy as 1 + 1.

**He can’t kill her Kage if she kills him first.**

-

Blue D picks up a B-rank mission to Iwa two days before New Year’s and sticks a note to her door before slipping out in the middle of the night. 

She dresses in non-descript shinobi gear with a hood to cover her hair, leather gloves and a wooden _hannya_ mask over her face as she disappears into the trees without as much as a rustle of leaves.

The missions is done in two days, leaving her with almost fourteen days before she has to return back to Konoha.

Assassinations has always been her speciality and it is the second time the woman dies by her hand. 

It's infinitely less messy than the first time around when she’d only been two years into ANBU and still learning the tricks of the trade. Instead of exploding her from the inside out with a burst of chakra she places a single finger to her chest and stops her heart without as much as a sleepy mumble.

The two nukenin that are waiting for her outside meet a less smooth end.

She meets up with them eight hours later, dropping down from the trees and reaching up to remove the mask from her face, sealing it away with a touch of her fingers to the mark Kakashi had drawn on her pouch. 

Pein and Konan are both wearing simple shinobi gear and they give her a moment to strip out of her blood stained shirt and trade it for one of her t-shirts, sleeves rolled up in a way that’s becoming familiar to her but sans the Nara mark.

Slips a hoodie over it and leaves it open in the warm night.

There’s no hitai-ate or vest to mark her affiliations as she steps up towards them with a roll of her shoulders.

He’s not the man he will be and she’s not the woman she will become. 

But the potential is there – something great and terrifying all at once and there's a stirring of anticipation in her chest when she greets them.

-

Uchiha Madara is a slippery bastard in her world and this one and the best way to get anything on him is the net out an information network geared entirely to pick up on news of him.

Which would be marginally easier if he was actually going by his name and not several variations of it. 

“I know of at least five epithets used by him,” she tells the two as she accepts a cup of tea from Pein while Konan starts skinning the three rabbits they’d caught. “The Tobi one is his most favoured with Mara and Obi being close seconds.”

There’s piles of papers before her and she sorts through them, pulling out those she needs and pushing the other aside as she flips out her sketches of three different masks.

The yellow one used during the Kyuubi invasion, the spiralling orange mask of Tobi and the sharingan marked one in pale purple.

She taps the first one. “This is his most recent one but it’s likely that he’s switched it to something different since he fought Yondaime-sama during the Kyuubi invasion and was forced to flee when his plan failed.” She puts a finger on the middle-one. “This one I’m not actually sure – he might actively start using it about seven years or so in the future but always in his persona as Tobi.” 

The middle-mask had also been the one worn by him when he killed Konan who’d died defending Nagato’s grave and his shared dream with Naruto. 

Shrugs and leans back when she reaches the third one. “This one is something that might be worn by Uchiha Madara but I can’t be sure.” Ideally, she wants him dead before ever seeing him with it again.

Thing is that a lot of her information had been made unreliable with change.

Madara had, after all, failed to kill both Minato and Kushina that day and Kurama had willingly allowed himself to be sealed into their child. With both Jiraiya and Tsunade in the village and armed with her knowledge they had prevented a massive loss of life and it had only left Konoha all the stronger for it.

The opposite of what the man had wanted. 

She hesitates over the information of Uchiha Obito as he considers the pictures and the five names scrawled at the bottom of the last one.

Decides that some things are better kept mum.

“There’s a man who defected from Kiri two years ago-“ 

“Hoshigaki Kisame?” Pein interrupts in interest.

“Yes,” she agrees after a moment, mentally tallying the years as she considers him carefully. 

Were Akatsuki already moving from a simple rebel group to something more? Had the Civil War in Ame already ended? Itachi had joined up with Akatsuki under the guise of defection from Konoha just a year or so after killing his family, hadn’t he? 

She doesn’t know. She’s ANBU but her specialisation laid in killing, not spying or information gathering.

She knows this: Konan and Pein had not teamed up with Madara in this world and there’s a chance they never will if the man is actually connected to the death of their friend. 

Of course, they could be playing her for information – and they _are_ \- but there’s too much truth in the pain at the mention of their friend for her to suspect them of being in liege with Madara. 

If that changes remains to be seen, of course, but at least she’ll have an idea of what to expect from them if that’s the case. Jiraiya is too close to the source to be a good judge of character and if she's careful she can work this to her advantage is more than one way. 

She stares blankly at the papers before her, feeling strangely old for all the youth of her body.

She’s an almost forty, isn’t she? It was rare for shinobi to be active or even alive at her age even if there were exceptions – like the Sannin and nukenin like Kakuzu. 

ANBU wasn’t supposed to last past their thirties.

“Blue-san?” 

She startles at the sound of her name and meets the amber eyes of Konan, seeing the way they crease ever so slightly, and draws a careful breath as she averts her eyes to the papers.

“Anyway, he’ll be approached or has already been approached by Madara.”

“Then we’ll start with him,” Pein says and shoves a bowl of freshly made rabbit stew into her hands.

-

She hadn’t actually considered the fact that they’d be travelling together.

A part of her had expected the two to take her information and leave and then contact her for another meeting. She’d even been prepared to travel to Kiri on her own and intercept them if they tried to work the information without her. 

“A hot spring?” She blinks at the pool of water she could have sworn she’d never even seen a hint of despite passing through this area of the woods multiple times both in this life and the one before. 

“Pein made it.” Konan is already shrugging out of her coat and Blue takes a moment to admire the fine lines of her muscled back before politely averting her eyes to Pein. “We’ve been travelling a lot and most villages aren’t particularly welcoming of nukenin.” 

Blue doesn’t mention that she knows that Pein and Konan aren’t actually nukenin but likely the secretive leaders of Amegakure. 

“I’d offer to help but truthfully? I’m a pretty lousy cook with anything that isn’t rice,” she tells Pein after hunting down enough wood to make a decent fire.

Both of them have stripped off their coats and shirts and Blue copies them with a grimace as she twists the wet fabric before throwing it beside theirs on the rock to dry.

Pein has his shield extended above them and she throws a longing glance at the pool of hot water before folding herself down between the two of them and starts the long arduous task of unwinding her braids with a fine-toothed comb that she pulls from her pouch.

“I enjoy cooking,” Pein admits as Konan looks up from the book she’d been perusing to watch her nimbly work the find braids to reveal the coarse curls of her natural hair. 

She’d shaved the right side recently so there’s less to unwind but they’re long enough to touch her lower back when she doesn’t tie them up. 

It’s repetitive work but familiar after so many years and she’s got most of them out by the time Pein finishes his fish stew with a sprinkle of something green with a sting of acidic that surprises her when she lifts a spoon of it to her mouth.

“Where did you learn to cook?” she asks curiously as she balances a heaping of fish and carrots and milky broth onto the spoon.

“Jiraiya-sensei tried to force it upon Konan,” Pein says after a moment of studying her. “Just because she was the only girl in the group.”

“Yahiko kicked him for it,” Konan comments as she sorts the fish from the carrots and alternate them between her bites. “And Pein volunteered. He taught us afterwards but he was always better at it and he actually enjoys it.” Her voice is dark and her eyes flicker with the flames of the fire while Pein’s hardly seem to catch the reflection of light at all – as if the Rinnegan did its best to absorb it.

Wonders what colour his eyes had been before Madara stole them.

She dips her spoon back into the broth and finds a piece of mushroom that practically melts in her mouth.

“I find myself wondering just how much you know about us,” Pein remarks – the first to finish his food while Konan reaches to scoop herself a second portion. “And why _us_ in particular.” 

Blue mentally strikes any mention of Akatsuki from her mind and tallies the members that had been – Kisame, already mentioned, and Kakuzu who’d she’d sent a cryptic letter in hopes of catching his attention. 

Kisame was inevitably involved but Deidara, Hidan and Sasori and had been recruited late and in this world Itachi had stayed in Konoha. Zetsu is older and harder and not quite human but loyal. Orochimaru would never join and leave because he was dead and Pein and Konan were here… with her. 

Her brow dips.

She hadn’t actually considered it but at the time Madara wouldn’t have any of the famous S-rank nukenin to turn to because they weren’t actually famous S-rank nukenin as of yet. Some never would be.

So it circulates back to Kisame and to Kakuzu as the two oldest members at this time.

 _Maybe_ Sasori but the last time she stopped by Suna rumours of him had been vague and he wasn't very high-ranked in the Bingo Book as of yet.

What was it her Kage said? Something about the shark-man and liars? 

“I thought Jiraiya told you all about it,” she comments distractedly as she nabs a sheet of paper and pens out LIARS? in sharp stencil letters and stores it away in her pouch to be considered. “All about _me._ ”

She meets the ringed eyes of the Rinnegan with sharp eyes of her own when they shift from the note she’d made and stills.

“Unless he didn’t tell you anything at all,” she says slowly.

“The world is watching,” Pein says as he leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees and folding his fingers together. “Konoha met something that should have levelled them to the ground with ready armies and came out nearly unscathed.” His voice is smooth, unhurried, and his eyes never leave hers. “The world isn’t blind to the changes being made. Tsunade-sama revolutionizing the Konoha hospitals – shinobi returning stronger and healthier when other village soldiers falter. Systems in place for generations being torn apart and brushed aside to give place for something new while the rest of the Elemental Countries remain stagnant.” 

“So you went through his notes and you found something on me,” she hums. 

Because of course they had – they were shinobi and Amegakure had been ravaged by the Civil War. The threat of a Third World War would send anyone scrambling 

“Perhaps something about being able to perceive bits and pieces of the future.” It’s a gamble – she hadn’t actually mentioned anything about being from another world and she’d pressed the fact that some of her information was unreliable.

Time Travel couldn’t be anyone’s first thought. 

“ _The Nara with Blue Eyes_ ,” Konan confirms. “Blue D, the bastard of the clan head’s dead brother.” 

“Daughter to the cousin of the Raikage, adopted a year before the Kyuubi attack on Konoha.” Pein shakes his head. “You were very cleverly hidden away but Jiraiya-sensei has always been too trusting.” Despite the harshness of his words there is something that can only be understood as fondness in the tone of his voice.

Perhaps she should be worried but she’d already known that they knew _something_ and in some ways this is even better because now she has a better grasp of their motivations. 

_Good_ motivations at that. Motivations that could be used and understood and reasoned with.

She’s more surprised that they had decided to be upfront with her – just as much as she _isn’t_.

Shinobi deal in information but information is never cheap or free.

The rest of the world would always react to the changes in Konoha, it’s inevitable - though this is the kind of worst-case scenario they’re going to have to keep an eye on least someone gets it into their mind to act on it. 

They don’t know that she knows that they’re the (likely) leaders of Amegakure and they likely knew less than they were trying to give the impression of knowing. 

The information was being offered as a sign of goodwill – a trade. The information on her, too, though it could be construed as a threat or even a warning. She doubts it is their aim, however, considering that their actions leaned for towards a hopeful (if tentative) alliance. 

It boils down to this:

Amegakure could not deal with another war following the aftermath of their Civil War. 

Pein and Konan had either recently claimed the seat as leaders of the country or were very near of doing it.

With Amegakure stuck between three major players, Konoha among them, another war following The Second Shinobi World War would tear them apart. 

So they had looked through Jiraiya’s notes and found her name, a mention of her future knowledge, and Uchiha Madara’s name among them. 

Blue had acted on the idea that Jiraiya had revealed something to them and through it confirmed that she knew something about Uchiha Madara, even had an active interest in the man that could be extended into a common goal, and were hoping to find out whether Konoha was truly preparing for war through her while looking for information relevant to their friend’s death. 

Had she been the actual sixteen-year-old Blue D she would have been furious - but she’s almost forty and, admittedly, rather impressed. 

“That’s a lot of trouble to go through just to learn about me.” She leans forward, one elbow on her knee and cheek resting on her knuckles. “I’m flattered to have caught the attention of the _Tenshi_ and _Kami_ of Amegakure.”

Surprise.

Wariness. 

Something like curiosity.

She flashes them a cheekily smile.

-

“Sasuke says his brother hasn’t been home for over a month.” Blue pauses at the foot of her room and stares blankly at the gathering of chipmunks occupying her bed. 

They’re a cute bunch and she loves them but they're getting marginally less adorable with age. 

It’s the stubbornness, she’s sure, and the whole _having opinions_ thing.

Shikamaru is at the head of it – his hair pulled up in its customary copy of his father. A grey shirt matching hers nearly perfectly save for the fact that he wore his mark proudly on his back and recently paired with a small green jacket in the same colour of her vest. 

Yoshino tells her it was perfectly normal and not to be surprised if he demands matching braids to go with it.

Naruto had gotten his hands on a blue shirt with the Uzumaki spiral in red on the back and wore his hair wild and tufty, the goggles on his forehead making it stand straight up. It was a birthday present from Jiraiya upon turning seven and he’d practically slept with them on ever since. 

Sakura’s hair is a mess – the work of careful styling to match her favourite adult in the world. Kakashi had taken to it about as well as he took anything and gone about pretending he wasn’t followed along by a pink copy of himself. 

If Kakashi doesn't end up giving Sakura the summoning contract for his hounds Blue is prepared to eat a hat.

Sasuke is a scowling lump of worry in the middle of it and Blue very deliberately doesn't look at him.

“Can we do this later?” She scans over the gathering of mugs half-hidden beneath her bed and the crumbs half-heartedly brushed away and resists the urge to turn right around and go crash another night at Genma’s. “Preferably not at six a.m. in the morning.” 

“But we’re worried!” Naruto shoves up beside Shikamaru. “Not even Tsunade-baachan would tell us anything!” 

Blue drops her coat on the ground.

“If Itachi has been missing for a month he probably has a reason for it,” she says as she starts unwinding the bandages at her ankles. “A _personal_ reason that has nothing to do with the lot of you.”

“But you’re his best friend!” Sakura protests, looking flummoxed at the dismissal. “Surely you must be worried!”

Blue stares at her tiny dirty feet on her bed and then the other gathering of dirty bare feet and turns.

There’s a scramble and smattering of little feet that follow her into the living room where Shikaku, Yoshino, Choza and Yuya look up from their breakfast. 

“Blue! I didn’t know you were home,” Yoshino says with a smile. 

“Just got back,” she admits and after a brief moment of hesitation leans down and presses a kiss to her cheek before straightening abruptly, ignoring the surprise in her eyes. “Is it alright if I borrow your bed? These ones has been all over mine with their dirty feet and I’m really tired.” 

“Of course,” Yoshino says, her surprise melting into sharpness as she zeroes on the children who all look mulish. “I’ll bring something up for you to eat in a couple of hours.”

Shikaku leans back and snags the closest child – Sasuke – when they make to follow her and the others immediately abandon mission to crowd around him with cries of _unfair_ and an overlap of explanations and justifications.

“Yeah, yeah.” He drops Sasuke down on the pillow between him and Yuya. “One at the time.” 

-

_“You have to change this.”_

She dreams the words never spoken, a whisper of weakness that she refuses to admit to as everything she’d loved fades with the seasons passing. 

**"But I was supposed to die with you.”**

-

“Why would you befriend me knowing what I am capable of becoming?”

It’s the middle of the night and Blue is reaching for him even before the words tumble out of his mouth. She curls her hand into his shirt, just lose enough to let him know she wants him there without making it forceful, and meets his eyes with tired blue eyes as she slowly pulls herself up.

“Because you were always meant to be more than him.” She draws closer, feeling the way his muscles bunch beneath the simple black shirt as she slowly flattens her palm against his back. “Everything is changing, Itachi,” she whispers as she leans her cheek against him. “I’m not the Blue D I was and you will never the Itachi he was. Danzo is dead, Minato is the Hokage of Konoha and the Uchiha Clan remain strong and alive.” Curls an arm around him. “ _Sasuke_ is **alive**.” 

He draws a shuddering breath.

“If it wasn’t for you-“ 

“-Konoha would be dust and I’d be nothing more than a miserable corpse in the mud and there’d be no-one around to regret anything.” 

He makes a strange noise, something between a laugh and something infinitely more wretched. 

“Itachi.” She curls her hand into the fabric over his heart. _“I’m so sorry.”_

The mangekyo burning in his eyes flickers and then dies as he closes his eyes and reaches up to tangle his fingers with hers in a white-knuckled grip.

“So am I,” he whispers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't think Itachi and Blue could remain friends without him fully understanding what could have been. 
> 
> Blue is too burdened by her world and a part of me really feels that Itachi was owed it, in a way. It's not like Blue's been chatting up Yoshino and Shikaku about their future son - he was never anything more than a mention in her Kage's reflections. But Itachi's actions directly influenced the way the world went with Sasuke's death and Mikoto and Fugaku's actions are a direct result of this knowledge. 
> 
> But it's a heavy burden to carry and Itachi needed some time to figure out some things for himself. I like to think he sought out Tsunade after talking with Blue in the last scene because she has been a good influence on him in this story and he needs an outside view.
> 
> Blue spent three years living exclusively for her Kage and her loyalty is a peculiar thing which we're exploring pieces of in this chapter. Pein and Konan are going to be a big part in how this plays out and I'm looking forward to exploring them properly as we go along. 
> 
> ALSO: I'm starting to suspect I'm incapable of doing short story-arcs because this is certainly not going to end in 3-5 chapters. Schizer. 
> 
> Cheers!


	4. Monsters and Demons

ANBU Weasel kills her first child when she’s eleven during a mission gone wrong near the borders of Kumo. 

Her jounin-sensei sits her down at the end of the day and studies her long and hard and she looks back, hands trembling where she’s curled them into the fabric of her pants. 

“This is your second kill.” He was never a kind man, neither was he cruel but he was ill-suited to take care of children. “How do you feel?” 

“I don’t know.” She looks down at her hands. “He was going to kill me.”

“He was.” Her sensei agrees. “Kiri train their children to kill even earlier than we do.” 

He’d always been blunt, tired and disillusioned from a long war and after all three of them had made chunin he’d chosen to retire. 

“Oh,” she says faintly. 

“Did it feel better or worse than killing the woman four months ago?” he asks, something deliberate in the way he shapes the question.

Blue shrugs miserably. 

_“I don’t know.”_

-

Blue becomes aware of the fact that Shikamaru is angry at her for one reason or the other in March when she returns to the village after finally managing to wiggle a meeting with Kakuzu.

The letter had been downright stingy, grouchy almost, and the numbers at the end of it would have left her faint if she even remotely cared for money past the basics of food and weapons. 

Even something like an apartment barely registered on her radar as a _need_ since she spent most of her time on foot anyway and Konoha would always supply at least a bed, if possible, for its ranked shinobi. 

Most of her money went into an account that was pretty much untouched past what she spent on presents for the growing number of kids in her life and basic gear. Shikaku and Yoshino still insisted on having a room for her and wouldn’t accept money so twice a year Blue made sure to splurge on something ridiculous for the two of them. 

She’s eighteen and actively taking A- and S-rank missions that take her away from the village for months at a time and she slips a couple of notes extra into the envelope just because she can before she leaves it with one of the couriers heading towards Iwa. 

It’s at the Academy, timed just-so, that she realises something is off as Shikamaru’s eyes meet hers with a myriad of emotions before he demonstratively turns away and moves very deliberately in the opposite direction of Sasuke, Naruto and Sakura who are all crowding about her. 

She stares after him, perturbed.

-

“Has Sasuke mentioned anything about Shikamaru recently?” Blue asks Itachi curiously as she drops through the window of his office, peering towards the woman wedged into the corner desk to help with the paperwork. 

Blue recognises her fairly easily as ANBU Bird – there’s something very telling about ANBU after so many years with them and she does a little twist and fold with her fingers in greeting that garners her an exasperated look. 

Most ANBU who circulate as office assistants around Konoha Hospital on guard duty are aware of her on some level these days.

Blue thinks there’s little point of hiding it – if she can pick an ANBU out in a room they sure can pick her out. There’s only so much that can be blamed on her acquaintance with the former ANBU Gorilla who’d retired some three years earlier and whose window Blue had spent a week throwing rocks at before getting officially acquainted with. 

Her name, Uchiha Rize, had been pretty self-explanatory as to why Blue had never met her in her world and the masks that had belonged to the Uchihas had been retired out of respect which explained why she'd never met an ANBU Gorilla.

The only reason she’d been allowed to claim Weasel for herself was because her fast track into an assassination specialisation had a bitter taste of irony that had amused her ANBU Commander. 

“Like what?” Itachi inquires, sixteen and unperturbed by her comings and goings as he peers at her through small square glasses that makes her pause when she zeroes on them. 

“I thought Tsunade-sensei fixed your eyesight?” She abandons mission, flattening herself against his desk and over his paperwork to make sure she had his undivided attention.

“She did,” he agrees. “But I’m far-sighted outside any influence of the sharingan.”

They do suit him, she thinks, tilting her head and smiling when he follows the motion with a tick to the side. 

“You look very cute,” she tells him earnestly. “Mikoto-san must have been delighted.” 

“Tou-san said that I looked very sharp,” Itachi says with a twitch of his lips as he leans back from her. “He also said let you know you’re invited to the Uchiha compound to celebrate my new position as Head of a division formed in a co-project between Intelligence and the Hospital.” 

Blue wobbles, gives him an owlish look that makes him smile – proper and rare and wonderful in the way it softens his face.

“You’re yanking my chain,” she accuses him.

“What was that about Shikamaru again?” he asks, ignoring the way she squints suspiciously at him. 

-

Itachi was, in fact, not yanking her chain and she feels breathless – overwhelmed and so, so proud of him - as she watches him in his new coat (dark red, made just for him and Uchiha fan and Konoha spiral side-by-side on his upper back and HEALER on the tail of it) by Yamanaka Inoichi and Senju Tsunade at the dining table. 

There are other people there, too. 

Colleagues – friends of Itachi, almost all of them older but one or two his age.

Blue thinks of Bingo Books with Flee-on-Sight order and a black cloak with red clouds and her Kage’s grief over the two Uchiha brothers. 

Looks at Sasuke who is practically glowing at his brother’s side and Itachi’s fond indulgence.

There is a strange sense of vertigo creeping upon her – a roar in her ear and a mechanical copy of the person beside her as she eats without tasting the food. 

All of these people are dead.

Some would make it another seven years, some of them long dead before everything crumbles to dust and there’s just her and her Kage _and–_

ANBU Weasel accepts the refilling of tea from Mikoto with a smile.

-

Blue doesn’t have time to figure out why exactly Shikamaru is mad at her because she gets another S-rank mission from Yondaime-sama who looks tired when he meets her eyes.

“I know you just got back from a mission but this is a time sensitive mission and I can’t wait for Snake or Ox to return.” It’s as much of an apology he can make as the Yondaime of Konohagakure and Blue understands. 

Sacrifice. 

Duty. 

Responsibility.

Love for his village (love for her Kage).

She makes a request of her own as she considers the mission details.

-

Blue meets up with Konan five weeks later – absolutely drenched in blood and half-naked by a lake where she’s struggling to sew a gaping wound in her thigh shut. 

She twitches around – lightning flaring under her skin – but there are arcs of paper settling gently on her hand, smothering the violent chakra as she blinks once, twice, slowly relaxing as Konan waits patiently by the tree-line. 

“I thought we were meeting up in Yuni,” Blue comments as she pulls one of the papers from her hands.

“You were late,” Konan informs her mildly as she steps forward, lingering near her right shoulder as Blue forces the hook through her skin with practiced ease. “So I decided to come to you.”

Konan studies the uneven lines, star-like explosions and burn marks that sprawl over the other’s skin. 

Nothing unusual in the life of shinobi – but they tell a tale of their own all the same. 

The needlework is effective but there’s a lack of care that makes them uneaven - just a means to an end to keep her from bleeding out as she tugs the last black thread in place and snips the end off with focus of chakra to her fingernail. 

Konan's gaze lingers at the cracked mask on the ground beside the younger woman with thoughtful consideration. 

Blue doesn’t speak much of herself but Konan and Pein discuss inconsistencies during long nights when they’re both tired of rain and politics.

The cheap carnival masks, the lack of care for her scars, the familiarity and ease of taking lives – regularly taking S- and A-rank missions that take her away from her village for at months at a time on her own when most her age would be religiously stuck to their teams as per Konoha regulations.

Konan puts her money on Blue being ex-ANBU – the pieces fits well, other than her age.

Nagato thinks it is more likely for her to have been part of Ne before Danzo’s death and while the age fits better something about Blue made Konan doubt it. 

So they make a bet of it.

“Kisame-san sends his regards,” Konan tells the younger woman as she watches her stretch – sinuous and lined with strength. 

The darkness suits her, Konan thinks. Melding into it like an old friend, the light catching the blue of her eyes when she looks up to meet Konan’s eyes. 

“He also sends a request.” 

She holds out the letter and Blue considers it for a moment before pocketing it with a shrug and something inside of Konan eases when she other smiles at her. 

-

Blue slips into the hot spring with a groan or relief after scrubbing herself clean in the cold lake and Konan watches her with amusement where she sits at the edge with water licking at her knees, pants rolled half-way up her thighs.

“Pein is really onto something with these hot springs of his.” Her braids are heavy where they fall wetly against her back, floating out around her as she tilts her head to look at the stars above them. 

“Ame is a country of constant rain.” Konan brushes a lock of blue hair away from her face. “A hot bath is needed to avoid tiring of it.” 

Blue hums, up to her chin in water. 

Ame had always been a country of rain but it wasn’t until Pein and Konan had claimed it for themselves that it had truly become a country of constant wetness since Pein used it to keep track of those coming and going.

It was a magnificent kind of defence, unparalleled to any of the other Elemental Countries, and it’s what allowes them to keep the happenings of the Civil War so carefully under wraps. 

“Why don’t you join me?” she asks as she pulls herself up properly, stretching her arms out behind her. “I requested two weeks off after this, was granted three and I finished the mission two weeks early,” she tells the other woman with a stretch of her lips and hooded eyes. “I’m not in a hurry this time.”

Konan gives her a thoughtful look before pulling her legs out of the water and slipping out of her cloak in a single smooth movement that makes Blue’s lips stretch wider as she relaxes against the rocks and reaches for the soap resting on the edge.

It’s something from Inoichi’s creations and smells of Yamanaka flowers and something with a sting of salt that isn’t strictly mission suitable but indulgent for a nice soak to rid of the smell of blood that clings stubbornly to her. 

Blue wonders how shinobi with sensitive noses deal with it because she tired of the sting of iron years ago.

The water barely ripples as Konan slips into it– tall and softer than Blue expects of her. 

It suits her, lines of muscles rippling as she stretches her arms over her head and then relaxing into a gentle stretch of pale skin as she sighs softly. 

Blue catches herself lingering on the glint of metal in her lower lip and dunks her head into the water.

-

She spends five days with Konan – a careful dance and exchange of information between moments of relaxation that is becoming more and more common between them.

“There’s a festival in Suna in four weeks,” Konan tells her as she shoulders her backpack and Blue pauses. “You should come.”

Blue remembers Konoha levelled to dust.

Blue remembers a Konoha brought back to life. 

Raises a hand in a noncommittal wave behind her as she takes to the trees with Konan’s eyes burning into the back of her neck.

-

Kisame had met up with Madara but Akatsuki in this world still belongs to Ame and without a clear aim and organisation to fall back on Kisame had, ultimately, denied the man. He hadn’t been able to tell them much other than confirm a new mask and the name Uchiha Madara but three years later they weren’t doing much better than that anyway. 

Whatever reasons Madara had for going underground Blue didn’t much like it.

She turns a blind eye to Pein and Konan’s recruitment of Kisame because he would never be welcome in Konoha and she rather prefers knowing where he is. 

She also can’t see the point of keeping Ame weak in some twisted loyalty to Konoha. 

Eventually the weak will hit back and desperation is a powerful weapon in the right hands. 

Kakuzu is a grouch but he’s old and he’s infamous for his way of cultivating and keeping contacts. Few would dare to challenge him for it and his information is hard-bought. Even people who handle information and money have standards and Kakuzu is very, very careful.

Blue isn’t surprised to be denied and she’s even less surprised when he questions her about her interactions with Pein and Konan with a hint of interest in those odd coloured eyes of his. 

She doesn’t know how long Kakuzu has been on his own or what draws his interest to Ame but she agrees to set up a meeting with the two leaders in exchange for information that’s pulled from him tooth and nail and with a hangover that has her fumbling for the doorknob on the way out of the bar in the morning.

She pats her pocket and his promise to contact her in the event that anything pertaining Uchiha Madara crosses on his radar and counts it a success as she bends over and vomits into a bush. 

-

At least until she reaches for her pouch and finds it empty two days later and ends up having to leg it in a small town near Iwa.

-

She gets into an altercation in Kuza and then another one on the borders of Kiri and she silently curses Kisame into the deepest pits of hell as she dodges the giant cleaver of the Demon of Kirigakure and the miniature kid of death swooping through mirrors in a bad game of whack-a-mole.

“Kis-“

She dodges low.

“Hoshi-“

She nearly has a heart attack when she spins to avoid the kid and nearly gets skewered by Momochi’s sword if not for an awkward half-jump that would have sent her into a sprawl if not for the palm she manages to get beneath her with a scrape of flesh and a push up to catch her footing. 

She twists around, annoyance burning into danger, lightning circling through her pupils and curling like crackling shackles between her hands as she pulls the rope of lightning tight with a snap and lashes out at the blur of movement above her while folding low.

ANBU Weasel meets the wide-eyes of the kid as it snags around their foot and a scream tears through the clearing as she yanks them sharply down and the smell of burning flesh hits her nose.

-

“This will help.” 

She throws the small jar at Momochi who catches it without looking up, his eyes intent on the charred skin of his companion’s ankle. 

He throws it in the opposite direction with barely a look and there’s a small splash as it hits the middle of the lake where Blue watches it slowly sink to the bottom before turning back to the two.

“It really would have helped,” she points out, just a smidge annoyed (Itachi had made that for her, after all).

“Why are you _here_ ,” Momochi growls out, his eyes narrowing upon her.

If it wasn’t for his broken leg Blue has no doubt he would have done something very bad to her.

As it is she’s crouching perfectly content on the handle of the giant cleaver of a sword where it sticks out from the ground and feeling just a touch bad for the surprisingly young face that had revealed itself to be behind the fake Hunter-Nin mask. 

“Hoshigaki Kisame sent me,” she informs him bluntly, looking away from the boy to the man. “I don’t normally run errands for him but something about the mighty Monster of Kirigakure owing me a favour was just too good to pass on.” 

“Kisame?” Blue definitely isn’t imagining the surprise there and she’s internally delighted by the informal address. 

“Yeah,” she hums, pawing through her pouch for the small letter and flicking it in his direction with a puff of wind chakra and he meets her eyes steadily before snatching it out of the air just as it threatens to fly past him.

Blue turns her head to the pretty grey of the boy – just a tad older than Shikamaru with a softness ill-fit for the world of shinobi. 

“ _Kijo_ -san?” 

Blue heroically doesn’t twitch as she turns to look at the stringy red hair of her stalker peering out from amidst the trees with a scowl on her face and squinting eyes. 

Tiny and dirty with eyes to match her hair. A stubbornness that is both familiar and exasperating yet softens something inside of her as she reaches out and beckons the kid towards her as Momochi’s kid perks up in interest.

The girl had been heaved around as a cargo by the Iwa-nin she’d happened upon near Kuza and when she’d left the kid at the nearest village she hadn’t stayed. 

Blue honestly doesn’t know what to do with her or her new nickname and slips off the sword, a dirty hand immediately latching into the back of her shirt when she touches ground. The redhead has her mouth in a line of displeasure that struggles to valiantly hide the fear and uncertainty that she practically reeks of.

“This is Karin,” she informs Momochi’s boy as she pats the head of the girl, ignoring the way she tightens her shoulders at the touch. “She's a bit shy.” 

“My name is Haku,” the soft boy tells the harsh girl.

-

“You’re really going to Ame?” Blue asks Momochi in interest that night, kids scrubbed clean and slumped against each other, shoulder to shoulder in an exhausted kind of sleep. 

They’re sharing a bottle of sake that she’d been dragging around since her meeting with Kakuzu, vaguely nauseous at the thought of drinking. 

Momochi frowns her, eyes dark as she swallows the content of her cup with a wrinkle of her nose.

“Ame is still rebuilding but it’s a good place and the leaders care more than they want to admit,” she tells him when he doesn’t respond. 

“I thought you were a Konoha-nin.” 

It’s an accusation and a question and she hides a grin at the hint of curiosity buried deep in his eyes. 

“I am.” She holds out her cup and he hesitates for only a moment before obliging her. “Konoha is strong,” she tells him, cheek in the palm of her hand. “It has had time to build and grow but it isn’t without its problems. People like you and Kisame would be considered too violent to ever find a place among its populace.” 

Yondaime is the only one told of her speciality in child murder and he’d been noticeably colder with her ever since. 

Blue understands because it is her duty to. 

Sandaime had turned a blind eye to the darker side of ANBU and it had allowed Danzo to weave Ne carefully through its ranks. Godaime had understood better than most the necessity but she had never liked it and most of Blue’s missions had gone through her Commander. 

Her Kage had nearly killed her when he found out. 

She’s requested more often than others and there’s a reason she ranks eleven years of active duty when Konoha crumbles to dust when most I her position would have been benched long ago. 

Child murder is frowned upon even in the world of shinobi – rape, sexual violence, unnecessary cruelty, too. Especially by Konoha who prides itself on being _better_ and closes its eyes to the ranks of ANBU who burn fast and die young with masks on their faces.

There’s a reason as to why shinobi like Mitarashi Anko and Morino Ibiki are regarded with abject fear even by fellow murders. Just like there’s a reason for the deliberate way a clan specialised in tearing people’s heads open chooses to sell flowers to the civilian population. 

Soften it, hide it, humanise it – frogs hiding venom in pretty colours.

Kisame and Zabuza are both part of generations that had murdered their classmates and stood as lone-survivors in a village that waste no time to send them out in war before even hitting puberty. 

They’re sharp edges and jagged teeth and everything Konoha pretends not to be. 

The Demon and Monster of Kirigakure would never find a home in Konoha but Ame? 

Blue slants a considering look at the girl who sleeps with a worried frown on her face while clutching white-knuckled to the hand of the boy beside her.

-

Blue isn’t saying it’s definitely payback for nearly getting her skewered but it absolutely is and she waves goodbye to a tiny face that cranes back to look at her with large-eyes. 

“He’s a good man.” She cups a hand to her mouth to let her voice carry. “Don’t let his frown scare you off!” 

Haku says something to Karin and she snaps something back, her back tense and worried where she walks beside him, absolutely drowning in the t-shirt Blue had borrowed her despite cinching it tight with a belt around her waist. 

Blue remains for a long time, her smile fading and something tired settling over her as she lets her arm fall.

-

Suna is hot and unforgiving and Blue is kinda fond of it. 

No one looks twice at her dark skin and dressed in a long red cloak over a shirt and pants she melts right into the population in their long airy clothes. Most of the food is spicy and it lends a certain kind of smell to its streets and she snags a rare treat of charred desert lizard from a vendor with sharp nose and round soft belly that she can’t help but lean just a tad closer to and smile just so to garner her a lidded look back. 

Blue loves being eighteen again and she’s grinning as she slips her hotel number into the other’s hand with an exchange of bills and a wink that paints the other’s cheeks red. 

“Blue-san?” She pauses, turning to glance down at the tiny Kazekage-to-be with his dark ringed eyes and hair just as red as the girl who’d clung to the hem of her shirt. 

“Gaara-chan!” She sinks into a crouch, knowing better than to touch as he frowns at her, suspicious but kinda hopeful as she reaches for her pouch. “Naruto made me promise to let you know that he really liked those seeds you sent him,” she tells him as she pulls forth a thick envelope. “Last time I saw him he was painting little pots red and green to plant them in.”

Her happening upon Gaara was entirely by chance and she’d been caught off guard by the abject misery that clung to the child who’d been eight on their first meeting. 

She’d mostly forgotten about her Kage’s musings about the this boy but it had all come rushing back as she caught him crushing a chunin to death in the middle of the street without anyone interfering.

A bit of stalking had revealed a bare room and a window of cacti and the next time she stopper By Konoha she'd cajoled a letter from Naruto with a handful of seeds and dropped it off before she could be squishes to death.

So far Naruto had kept his promise of keeping it between them while she acted as a courier between the two boys. There was no fancy letter exchange at ten but the notes had absolutely gotten longer and the envelopes thicker and there’s a rattle in this one that makes Gaara perk up in interest. 

Blue isn’t in the habit of questioning hobbies but there’s something about two little boys, both sons to the Kage’s of their respective villages, bonding though flower seeds that amuses her to no end. 

Minato or Kushina are going to kill her the day they find out exactly what kind of person she’s put their son is in contact with.

If Kakashi doesn’t get to her first.

“Tell Naruto-san that I was very pleased by the poppy seeds he sent me and that they just bloomed,” Gaara tells her in that careful way he has of speaking.

“I’ll be here until the day after tomorrow,” she says gently. “I’ll be at the south gate by noon so if you have a letter ready by then I can bring it with me.”

He visibly hesitates before giving a sharp nod and bowing good-bye before trotting off with the letter carefully hugged to his chest. 

It’s the day before the festival and pretty early in the day but already there’s streams in a myriad of colours spilling from rooftop to rooftop.

From the corner of her eye she catches the young woman from the stall moving through the crowd in the direction of her hotel and she dodges around the corner, intent on making it there first. 

-

Blue is a greedy lover, taking and taking until the other is clawing lines into her back with a noise of pleasure that edges into a sob as it toes the line of _too much_.

Then, only then, does she soften her touch, drawing back and sucking her fingers clean before leaning down to steal a tired kiss from welcoming lips. 

The other’s fingers that card through her braids with searching eyes when she does no move to touch herself despite being dressed down to only her underwear, chest bare. “Do you want me to stay?” she asks and Blue hums her agreement, tracing gentle shapes on the soft belly as the other huffs. “Then come here.” 

Blue grins and sprawls on top of the other who laughs but is so very careful with the way she touches her, tugging her closer without actually grabbing hold of her.

Civilians who willingly sleep with shinobi are rare but so very forgiving for what they can and cannot take as long as they get to experience that rush of adrenaline that comes from sleeping with something dangerous trapped in human shape.

Blue allows the exploration of her scars as she considers the glint of metal in the other’s lower lip. 

“Have you ever thought about getting a tattoo?” the other asks her and Blue gives her an inquiring look. “The colours would look lovely against your skin.” 

“I wouldn’t know what to make,” she murmurs, aware of the way the other’s breath hitches as she trails her fingers over the soft curve of her ear and down to the skin by her neck with quiver and a swallow that makes Blue’s mouth curve.

She flattens her palm on the woman's chest, just below her throat, and leans forward with a careful distribution of her weigh to put pressure on her breathing.

“I bet you’d look pretty with something that winds around you,” the older woman says with a harsh inhale as Blue latches onto the side of her neck. 

“Yeah?” she hums, dragging her teeth against the other's jaw with a sharp nip as she draws back, just enough for their eyes to meet. “Right now the only thing I want winding around me is _you_.” 

Blue swallows the other’s laugh with grinning kiss. 

-

Hours later Blue slips through the window with a note on the bedside table for her sleeping companion and room service with dinner ordered for the evening and an offer to share it with her.

She picks up a soft fruit with white flesh and little black seeds inside of it and devours it before slipping into the small corner shop, glancing around her in curiosity. 

“I don’t tattoo shinobi,” the woman behind the counter says with a bored voice, cigarette in her mouth and brown eyes lidded with dislike. 

“And here Rhan-san told me that this was the only proper place to get a tattoo in all of Suna.” Blue drops into the couch by the door as the woman zeroes upon her. 

“I swear, that woman and her fascination with your lot is going to get her into an early grave.”

She’s a small thing but there is nothing soft about her despite the round face. Her skin unusually bare for the people of Suna with her belly shirt and black skirt but her dislike isn’t as sharp as it could have been as she stares at Blue’s deliberately bare arms. 

Blue grins, expectant and waiting. 

“ _Fine_ ,” the other hisses. “But you’re leaving your weapons by the door!” 

Blue politely doesn’t tell her that she can fry her dead in a second flat from just touching her skin as she moves to obey.

-

Rhan’s look is assessing when she keeps her shirt on upon returning to the room with ham and two large honey melons to split for dessert. 

“Will you allow me to see?” she asks finally when Blue bites into her second piece of melon.

“I’ll get naked for you if you get naked for me,” she says truthfully.

“Yeah, no, not happening,” Rhan says flatly. “I didn’t think it was even possible to wind twelve of those out of me but I don’t think you’re going to stop at thirteen,” she says bluntly and Blue smiles into her melon.

“I would if you asked me to,” she says sincerely. 

“We both know I wouldn’t,” Rhan grumbles and reaches for a bottle of grape wine Blue was pretty sure she hadn’t ordered. “My clit would never forgive me,” she breathes into the drink before downing it and Blue bites down on her bottom lip to suppress a laugh. 

-

Konan finds her first, her touch soft against her shoulder as she steps up beside her with two bottles of cider dangling in her left hand. 

“You came.” She doesn’t sound surprised, exactly, but Blue sees the thoughtful look in her eyes and wonders what exactly the other is reconsidering on her turning up. 

“You invited me, didn’t you?” she hums, accepting the cider after the other cracks it open.

“I did,” Konan agrees with a smile that softens her face and Blue pauses with the bottle half-raised to her mouth. “Have you found anything that’s caught your interest yet?” she asks, glancing at the many rows and rows of stalls with games and food that stretch before them. 

“I didn’t want to start without you,” Blue admits absently, missing the other's startled look. “Besides, I’ve never been to one of these before.”

There’s a certain kind of irony that her first festival is in the company of the _Tenshi_ of Ame. A person, who in her world, had been part of the orchestrated destruction of the village she’d loved and served until it was nothing but dust.

“Then you have a lot to discover,” Konan says as she slips her arm into hers and Blue gives her a sharp look that’s met by innocent eyes and slowly forces herself to relax and accept it as the other very deliberately gives her a little tug to follow along.

“Kisame-san sends his regards.”

They melt together with couples and friends, parents and children, linked by hands and arms around them. 

Blue feels something strange in her chest as she glances at the clasped hands of the two in front of them before Konan sweeps her deeper into the crowd.

“He told me to let you know he didn’t appreciate it and not to do it again,” Konan informs her as Blue watches the way people automatically step out of her way, almost unconsciously giving path to the tall woman despite her wearing civilian gear and a cloak. 

Blue catches the amusement in the other’s tone and something unknots inside her chest.

“He folded like a wet clothe, didn’t he?” She tightens her hold on the other woman and falls in step beside her as they ease out of the thickest part of the crowd and into one of the wider streets.

“It was a miserable excuse of a protest,” Konan says with a twitch of her lips. “Karin is in good hands.”

Blue thinks of Itachi in another world and another Bingo Book and a man with blue skin who’d died defending him.

“I know,” she agrees contently.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm doing a _thing_ with Ame and the evolution of Akatsuki which I ended up dragging Zabuza, Haku, Kisame and Karin into so I had to update the tags. Hm.
> 
> I actually meant to get back to Shisui in this chapter but, well, yeah. 
> 
> We'll return to him and Shikamaru in the next chapter instead. 
> 
> Slow burning this to the end of the world but there's a lot to consider from their positions, their loyalties and ambitions in life. Besides that I'm still laying a lot of ground for the Konoha Naruto is going to step into at twelve which is when I'll focus more on him and Kushina and Minato as a father and not just as the Yondaime. 
> 
> I have such plans for the chunin exam. It's gonna be an... interesting... event. 
> 
> Karin called her kijo = demoness because of her habit of wearing cheap carnival masks shaped like demons. 
> 
> We all have our vices. 
> 
> Cheers!


	5. Masks and Humanity

Blue braids her hair thin on the side and thicker in the middle, finally letting it fall free down her back with a careful stretch and roll of her shoulders. 

Her last hair-band had been destroyed during the mission and she makes a mental note to pick up a slew of new ones as she reaches for her underwear, slipping into one of her Nara t-shirts followed by a pair of dark shorts before letting her bare feet hit the floor.

She lets her fingers linger on the black box that had been beneath the clothes before sliding it into one of her bedside drawers and sealing it shut with one of Konan’s paper seals. 

Shikamaru would already be at the Academy since she’d returned home in the middle of the night and she’d slept late. Shikaku is the jounin-commander of Konohagakure and Yoshino handled most of the Nara clan’s internal businesses which meant that both of them were out of the house early in the morning during busy days. 

She slips downstairs, melting naturally into the silence of the rest of the house and serves herself some juice in her cup bought so many years ago. 

It had broken, once, when Shikamaru was five and too curious for his own good. Yoshino and Shikaku had it sealed together in the traditional style of _kintsukuroi_ which was both dramatic and unnecessary and makes something ache inside of her as the gold and orange catches the light of the sun from the kitchen window. 

She finds an apple and two onigiris in the fridge accompanied by a note with her name and she eats them on the back porch, curled up and absently studying the game left behind half-finished as one of the deer noses its way over her shoulder.

She strokes her palm over the large nose and between its eyes, rubbing at the hard skin from where antlers rise tall. She offers the apple to nostrils that flare wide before it crunches a chunk of it off, content to slowly finish it off from the palm of her hand.

Blue dares to lean back against the broad chest of the creature and close her eyes.

Allows herself to just relax and breathe before the world demands her attention again. 

-

Shikaku pauses in the doorway leading out to the back porch and Yoshino steps quietly beside him with a glance up to his face before searching for that which had caught his attention. 

Finds the large doe folded down in the grass beside the porch and the not-quite-eighteen-year-old who had managed to tuck herself tight to its side. 

Yoshino isn’t sure what’s more surprising – the deer allowing it or the loose limbedness of the ANBU who has been spending less and less time in the village, constantly on the move since rising in ranks and able to regularly take A- and S-rank missions. 

Yoshino sees the Blue D who her son looks up to with adoration and she sees the ANBU who falls into a familiar pattern and she wonders if they’ve done right by this woman from another time who is so young and so old at the same time. 

“We gave her a home,” Shikaku says quietly beside her, always quick to catch onto her thinking as he rests a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Something to return to.”

Yoshino thinks of a younger Blue who comes into her home with the clothes on her back and an orange cup clutched to her chest. 

No family, no friends. Someone who had lost everything and been thrust into a house of strangers and expected to play family. 

A woman trapped in a child’s body – unable to connect with those her perceived age and locked out from the world of adults, constantly looking through the window for a place to belong. 

They’ve come a long way since those first years together and the woman is no longer a stranger and though Yoshino troubles to put a word to their relationship she’s content with _family._

“Should we wake her up?” she asks her husband quietly as she reaches up and gives his hand a squeeze.

“I was thinking about slow cooking something,” Shikaku murmurs back, equally quiet. “Give her a little bit of time to wake up on her own.” 

But neither of them move and Yoshino leans over to rest her head on her husband’s shoulder. 

-

Shikamaru doesn’t set a foot in the house but sleeps over either at the Akimichi or Yamanaka households according to Naruto who is unusually quiet and nibbling on his lower lip during the entire conversation.

“Is Shikamaru going to be alright?” he asks her outside the Uzumaki household, blue eyes searching hers for answers she isn’t sure she has.

He’s ten now – seven years younger than he’d been the first time she knelt before him and there’s so much yet for him to learn about the world. 

But he’s happier than he’d ever been with her and she kneels before him with the same certainty and love she feels for her Kage and brushes strands of blond hair to the side and sees something vulnerable in this boy that hadn’t survived with the destruction of Konoha – a trust she doesn’t deserve.

“I’ll speak to him,” she promises him. “He’s angry at me, not you – he’ll be back once he figures out he doesn’t have to avoid you to avoid me.” He wrinkles his nose and she can’t resist leaning forward to press a kiss to his cheek just like she’d done when he was a child. 

He grumbles, an echo of Sasuke who smacks his brother’s fingers away from his forehead and she thinks that she’s not ready to see him grow up.

Isn’t ready for the way he looks more and more like the man she’d loved and lost and yet-

Yet he’s still _here_ and she catches glimpses of the man he’ll grow up to be in actions and words of a boy and sometimes it hurts so much that she has to stop and remind herself to breathe.

“I’m not a baby.” He swipes at his face, cheeks puffing out as the door opens behind him and they both look up at Kushina who raises an eyebrow at her son as Blue slowly straightens. 

“I heard you were back, Blue.” 

Of course she had – her husband is the Yondaime and he’d been personally handling the majority of her missions, especially when her body had been younger and it looked strange to send her out on long-term missions when she was only supposed to rank chunin and then newly minted jounin. 

Her speciality is assassinations but it isn’t what her records says and she’s kept out of the ANBU corps despite the missions she’s requested for more and more frequently in a pattern that greets her like an old friend. 

“Yeah, I slept most of the week away,” she confesses sheepishly. “But I’ll probably be around for another five days or so before I have to pick up a new mission.” 

“Kaa-chan, can I go with Blue tomorrow?” Naruto asks, turning earnest eyes up. 

“We’re having dinner at the Uchiha compound tomorrow,” Kushina reminds him. “You already made plans with Sasuke to arrive early.” 

“I need to track down Shikamaru anyway,” Blue admits as his face does a complicated thing. “But I promised Itacchin we’d go a round on the training field on Wednesday when he has his day off and I doubt he’d mind if you tag along.” 

Naruto lightens up.

“Can Sakura come to?” he asks eagerly. 

“Of course,” she agrees easily. “But anymore and you run it by Itachi first, alright?” 

He nods eagerly as she reaches out to tousle his hair. 

“Kakashi was looking for you,” Kushina tells her as Naruto ducks beneath her arm, hollering for his father with a distant response from inside. “He’s been working on a new lightning release and I strongly suspect he wants to use you as a guinea pig,” she says with humour. 

Lightning is rare inside the walls of Konoha. She inherits it from her mother’s side of the family and Kakashi is just one of those geniuses that comes around once upon a blood moon.

“Anything fun?” Blue asks in interest. “That chirping thing of his really isn’t discreet.” 

How Kakashi had gotten it into his head to call it an assassination technique when it could heard a mile away eluded her and she’d told him as much when she’d caught him mid-spar with Gai. 

He’d been terribly affronted. 

“It’s something alright,” Kushina says with a twitch of her lips. 

-

It takes Blue a surprising amount of time to track down her kinda-brother and around lunch she takes a break and slips into Intelligence to have lunch with Ibiki and, surprisingly, Anko who gives her a look that Blue crumbles to in seconds. 

“You are just too cute,” Blue grumbles as she slides her bento over in a trade for whatever mysterious creation the other dared to call food. 

The look Anko gives her in return is very telling to just what the other thinks of her mental state.

“Heard your last mission was a roaring success.” Ibiki slides his bento over and Blue steals two of the rolls and a piece of octopus without even opening the box Anko had practically thrown in her direction. “It’s too bad Yondaime-sama is so dead-set on keeping you out of ANBU.” _Or T &I _goes unmentioned but acknowledged. 

Blue is good at compartmentalization but she’s not in class with these two and she knows it. Killing is one thing but deliberately drawing out harm for days at a time takes a mentality that is very rare even among soldiers of death. 

Especially when not all of them are guilty, not all of them bad and sometimes the face in the room isn’t a stranger but a fellow Konoha shinobi.

There are those who thrive on pain but they never last long, even in the ranks of ANBU. 

Blue remembers ANBU Raven who’d been discovered with bits and pieces of her kills stuffed into her fridge – nearly all of them from children, entire jars with little toes and fingers and floating eyeballs. 

Blue is an expert in killing and she does it quick, silent and painless if she can get away with it as her specialisation demands and she serves long past normal ANBU regulations for a reason. 

“I don’t know, I’m enjoying this whole being jounin thing.” It’s a half-truth and she cracks the lid open to peer inside, relaxing when it doesn’t immediately sends her rearing back. “Did you know one of the new chunins put in a request to pair up with me for my next A-rank mission?” 

It wasn’t unusual, chunin could request to join up with jounin – often a team – to get the experience of doing an A-rank. It was popular among those aiming for either Hunter-nin or ANBU especially, but most chunin ended up doing it at least as a one-time thing when the jounin exams were to take place in a village they were on good terms with.

Iwa was the only one to unofficially ban Konoha from participation – they had met heavy losses in the hands of Konoha’s Yellow Flash in particular during the war and Yondaime-sama was understanding enough not to press it (yet). 

Kumo wasn’t particularly welcoming either but while they grumbled no strange losses had been covered up in the village so far.

Kiri was just a big no-no in general and wasn’t interested in hoisting anything as they rebuilt from their Bloodline Purge. Ame, likewise, was playing possum as it appeared to be in the midst of a long-standing Civil War.

Blue pays one of the prostitutes in a village near Ame who sends her letters on the weather and there hasn’t been a single day without rain for almost two years now which can only mean one thing.

It’s amusing all the same, and clever, and she wonders if Pein and Konan will make it official or if they’ll remain in the shadows here, too. 

“Was it Izumo?” Anko asks in interest. 

Blue peers to her in surprise. “Yeah,” she admits, fishing up a charred fish-like thing drenched in some kind of sweet smelling sauce with a dubious look. “How did you know?” 

“Raidou and Genma speaks pretty favourably about you,” Anko says, plopping one of Shikaku’s dumplings into her mouth. “You’d think you were some kind of perfect kunoichi the way they go on and on about you and Izumo has been pretty much hanging onto their words lately,” she says with a smirk as the thing slips from Blue’s chopsticks.

-

Deciding to deal with the matter of Genma and Raidou at _another time_ Blue steals the last of Shikaku’s dumplings for herself and very, very carefully channels a bit of chakra to her nose – sneezing almost immediately when she breathes in a sharp musky smell of a civilian who only just avoids bumping into her.

“Sorry,” she calls to him as he takes one look at the hitai-ate wrapped around her arm and scuttles off with a mumble.

Clever, clever Shikamaru she thinks as she tracks his scent through the civilian district – knowing there’s little she can do to melt into the populace without proper preparations.

Some sell civilians short but fear is a good teacher and they know how to pick a shinobi out of the crowd. 

If Blue was interested in making an effort she would have changed clothes or put on a good henge, slowed her steps and taken a moment to erase her chakra signature but she doesn’t even bother to remove the protector on her arm as she slips into the crowd in hunt of the scent. 

“Blue-senpai!” Sakura’s familiar voice makes her pause, locking onto determined green and a small hand that slips into hers without hesitation when she finally catches up. “Are you looking for Shika-kun?” she asks, falling in line. “He’s at Tenten-chan’s place.” 

Blue has frankly no idea who _Tenten_ is but she slows her steps just so and Sakura takes lead without prompting.

“How have you been?” Blue asks curiously, peering down at the small pink-haired thing that had entrusted the fate of her best friend into her hands in another world. 

It isn’t rare, per say, for Sakura seek her out but she is Kakashi’s shadow first and foremost and there’s something itching to be said in the too tight grip.

“Kaa-chan has been really weird lately,” Sakura says bluntly, turning a sharp right. “She keeps saying I should be spending more time with Sasuke-kun and Sasuke-kun only and she says I should wear my hair longer and to stand straighter and she gets really mad when I come home from training but I can’t help that I get muddy or that my clothes tear! And no one elses parents seem to care anyway.” 

Civilians, Blue thinks just a bit exasperated and just a tad worried because Sakura is looking genuinely upset beside her.

“Have you talked to Umino-san about this?” she asks, because she’s not really the right person to deal with parents of any sort.

Sakura looks at her as if she’d spoken an alien language. “But he’s a _guy_ ,” Sakura says plainly. “And Kumi-sensei keeps saying we have to act proper and do this and that during kunoichi training anyway.”

Blue wonders who the hell _Kumi-sensei_ is and what in the world kunoichi training had gone to because _proper_ wasn’t a word in the life of shinobi. 

There were some who ended up specialising in information gathering – the sort that used sex as a weapon. Anko was a perfect example, Kurenai too – though her outfit was a particular thing that used genjutsu in a way Blue was very wary of ever facing. 

But it was a specialisation chosen later in life – the sort that tended to reach the dark corridors of ANBU and tokubetsu-nin like Genma who chose one open specialisation to cover the fact that he could charm the pants of someone with lidded eyes and a roll of his hips. 

It wasn’t something taught to the average chunin and definitely not genin.

She considers the small pink girl who keeps a firm grip on her hand who’d turned to her for _something_ and tugs the girl aside, crouching down before her by a small melon stand where the owner glares at them both suspiciously.

“Sakura, how many kunoichi do you know outside me?” she asks carefully. 

Sakura, who’d opened her mouth, closes it with a frown – intelligent eyes considering her. “I know Kumi-sensei,” she ventures slowly. “And Sasuke-kun’s mom is a kunoichi, right? And Naruto’s…” 

And children do not go to the mothers of their friends for help.

She inhales the smell of Shikamaru, tracks him streets down, and makes a decision. 

-

“You see that purple haired lady over there?” she whispers to the girl crouching on her chest, all four of Blue’s limbs stuck tight to the ceiling and layered under a careful genjutsu that she strains to keep hold of.

Sakura leans forward to peer over her shoulder. “The one in the long coat?” she whispers just as quiet.

“Yes.” Blue reaches into her pouch and hands her a folded letter. “Give this to her. And when she tries to shove you out you dig your heels in and says ‘You owe Blue for getting rid of the creepy snake-man’, alright?”

Sakura nods seriously as she sticks it into the back of her shorts.

Blue grins and grabs her by the collar of her shirt and with a grin to determined eyes she launches the girl at the woman, beating a hasty retreat as Sakura smacks into Anko who has to abandon drawn kunais mid-movement – arms thrown up and chest wide-open to the pin-point missile of the girl – and they topple onto a table full of scrolls and books and papers with a _crack_ of two foreheads colliding.

Blue winces and _feels_ the way Ibiki’s eyes zeroes on her back just T &I explodes into pandemonium and she slips into the narrow pipe leading to the roof with haste.

-

In the end it’s almost nine o’clock before she finds him.

Shikamaru slips out of the small kunai shop with a wave to a brown-haired girl and a broad chested man behind her.

He says nothing as she drops down beside him, his shoulders tightening and mouth settling into a straight line. 

“I can wait,” she tells him quietly when he does nothing to acknowledge her, “if this is something you have to think about. But if you want to talk about it – if there’s something you want to say to me – I am here and I promise to listen and do my best to explain.” 

It’s spring and the air is still cool – a far cry from the heat of the summer months. The night isn’t as dark as winter and the moon is a gentle thing above them, shining through the clouds drifting softly past.

There’s no answer.

“Shikamaru.” She catches the way he flinches minutely at his full-name. “The Nara compound is your home.” She stops and he takes another two steps before halting and she sighs, dragging a hand through her braids and staring at his shoulders that aren’t as small as they’d been and would grow ever still. “I’ll sleep elsewhere, alright? So go _home_.” 

The street behind him is empty when he swivels around.

-

Blue wiggles down between their naked bodies, their skin still sticky with sweat and the air heavy with a thick musky smell that creeps through her nose.

Raidou grunts sleepily and wraps arm and leg around her, nosing into her neck with a sleepy grumble.

Genma cracks an eye open where he lies on his back, cover half-thrown off his body, and there’s a question there that she shakes her head to.

-

This isn’t ANBU Wolf, she thinks as she traces scorch marks in the earth and green grass withered to ash. 

This is something far more dangerous. A man with something to live and die for.

“Have you considered getting yourself an apartment?” Kakashi asks, brushing his hands together as she stares at him. “You’re, what, eighteen now? You don’t have to stay in the Nara compound forever.” 

Kakashi meets her eyes evenly and she does a show of rolling her shoulders before folding her arms across her chest.

“Comes from the man who practically lives the Uzumaki mansion,” she says without heat.

In her world Kakashi is a thing with too much regret and heavy shoulders hidden behind disinterest and vices. He’s ANBU Commander and then sensei of her Kage who whispers his name with regret and longing as he clings to her.

This Kakashi has support, has something to return to and something strive to protect and he’s both softer and harder for it.

“Nothing says you have to stay there all the time,” he points out as he cups his hands together. “But there’s nothing wrong with having something of your own.”

Blue watches the lightning grow until both hands are alive with white chakra and he’s carefully separating them, flattening it and strengthening it until he’s up to his elbows in death that buzzes with a low whine and he shifts his stance, breathing out carefully as he focuses on keeping it stable.

It’s a bastardized thing so far but she sees the destruction around them and there’s potential for something that’s both deadly and beautiful if he can learn to harness it. 

There’s sweat beading at his brow and she gives him a moment to level his breathing.

Out of all the jounin the village she’s one of few who won’t die in the case of him losing control and the only one who is marked with RAITON SPECIALIST under their name which makes her an excellent partner in this endeavour.

Blue folds her fingers together in two of her favourite seals and claps her hands together, lightning flaring bright as she drags her palms out and catches a baton of lightning with a hum against her skin.

“You fry me with that and you’re buying me lunch,” she warns him with a sharp flash of her teeth as his eyes narrow at the challenge.

-

“ANBU get their own apartments,” she tells Itachi early Wednesday as they’re walking side by side through the village. Most of her right arm is bandaged up courtest of Itachi who'd been none too impressed. “Before that I lived in the housing arranged by the Academy – just like I did… here… before, well, everything,” she makes a vague gesture. “But I never had to actively search the market for something.” 

Blue had stared at Raidou – feeling the information go into one ear and out the other before she’d nervously excused herself and skipped breakfast with him and Genma entirely in favour of dragging Itachi out of bed.

“Any apartment cost drawn from your mission payment and you need a trustworthy landlord to keep an eye on it when you’re out,” Itachi hums, nodding to one of the civilians dragging a heavy cart out with a huff and getting a wave back. “There are certain apartment complexes in the north district that offer the service.”

“Bad ones, according to Raidou.” She tugs Itachi to a stop and picks up a gathering of blue ties from one of the civilian shops run by a young couple. The woman manages to chat Itachi into buying a gathering of ribbons in the five minutes Blue is inside and is in the process of showing him how to braid it in when she steps through the door opening. 

“You should teach him the fancy one.” The man from the counter cranes his head out past Blue to look at them both.

“You mean the twist?” 

“No-“

Blue buys herself a stick of dango and watches the entire spectacle from the gate as Itachi listens with careful consideration. 

-

“It’s for Kaa-san’s birthday,” he answers her unasked questioned some thirty minutes later when they’ve crammed themselves into a little hut of a breakfast place that smells strongly of smoke and herbs. 

There’s only two options on the small menu – one with the entire thing served with rice and one with the entire thing served with noodles. They order one each and Blue pokes at the pot of spicy tea they hadn’t ordered with a curious look, drawing her hands back when the owner gives her a filthy look for touching without being served.

“Oh yeah, she’s turning forty this year, isn’t she?” she doesn’t need to phrase it as a question because she _knows_.

Blue dies at twenty-eight and she wakes up six-years-old which makes her eighteen and forty at the same time. Coincidentally, the same age as Mikoto and two years older than her son at the same time.

“That she does,” Itachi humours her as he accept his bowl of noodles and vegetables with a nod of thanks.

“Do you have any ginger?” she asks as she accepts her own bowl, watching as he pours them a cup each. 

He’s civilian but definitely used to shinobi, she observes as he reaches for fresh root with a grunt.

He’d steeped the tea from see-through jars and he’d left it within smelling distance while he boiled the water. All ingredients were fresh and he’d cooked it right in front of them, his movements open and sleeves up at his elbows. 

It isn’t unlike the consideration shinobi use when dining with each other outside their teams. Always a fresh catch, simple and easy identifiable leaves for tea, the one who’d made it the first to taste it. It wasn’t a sure thing but if you were dining with someone who you suspected had reason to harm you the rule was to nibble and hope you puked up anything bad or to make the first move. 

Often it ended up a mix of it both and Blue vividly remembers being seventeen and hallucinating badly as she crunched the man beneath her into a bloody smear for hours before puking all over the mess and wobbling into the night.

It had been a very, very awkward report to make and she’d been seeing monsters in shadows for weeks afterwards.

Beside her Itachi makes a vaguely panicky noise and steals her entire bowl of ginger to choke down as Blue and the owner stares at him. 

-

“I keep forgetting you don’t like spicy things,” she admits sheepishly as she pays.

Itachi is still looking a bit pale but he’d stopped sweating and he takes a large bite of his blueberry ice cream. “I’m never letting you pick a place again,” he grumbles through a mouthful.

“Fair,” she agrees. “What time did you tell Sasuke and Naruto?” 

“Nine.” He digs into the melon, mixing blue and green before swallowing it down. “They’re bringing Sakura-san and Ino-san along and I think Naruto mentioned something about asking Shino-kun as well.”

“Shino – that’s Shibi-san’s son, right?” she checks absently, her gaze on the southern civilian district before taking a left towards the training grounds. 

-

Blue takes a new mission the following day and leaves a note for Itachi with Genma.

She stops by her room at the Nara compound and yanks the drawer open and throws the black box into the bag containing her ANBU gear and without bothering to change slips right back out as Yoshino steps through the bedroom door with her name on her lips.

She takes one of the ANBU routes out of the village, folding her fingers in the proper code and disappearing with a nod into the darkness of the forest, feeling the knots in her chest ease as she scales a redwood high to the sky, far above the other treetops. 

Konoha is but a distant thing and the world lies before her as she breathes in the night air. 

-

She’s nearly on the doorsteps of Ame, drenched to her bone and regretting leaving her cloak behind when she pries her bag open and reaches for the box, brushing her hand over its blank surface as she lets herself drop to the ground at the trunk of a large tree.

There are days when Blue D misses being only ANBU Weasel. 

There’s a simplicity in existing solely for the next mission. Just another shinobi in a faceless crowd that changes around her with barely a nod of acknowledgement to the unmarked graves and names that goes forgotten in history.

Her mother and father dies traitors to the Raikage and she remembers broad shoulders and regretful eyes before she’s carried away with tears in her eyes, snot in her nose and her screams muffled by a palm pressed over her mouth.

Yondaime-sama thinks he’s doing her a favour as he hangs her mask on the walls of his office but Blue sees half of her out of her grasp and people still dying by her hand and a part of her, deep inside of her chest, the part of her that longs for her Kage and a world of dust, resents it. 

Blue understands because she has to – because it’s demanded of her - and she sees the logic of keeping her out of ANBU in the same way she’s relived when Itachi never dons the mask. 

But she’s been ANBU Weasel for over fourteen years when she touches the ground of this world and a part of her never _stops_. 

It’s the part of her that picks up her first assassination mission in this world with something like _relief_ and it’s the part of her that dons cheap carnival masks with devil horns because without the mask she’s only Blue D.

Blue D who feels too much and hurts in a way that is terrible and unfamiliar when Shikamaru refuses to look at her. 

At the end of the festival, when Konan is shrugging into her coat and dragging a mask up her nose to travel through the sand storm rising in the distance, she slips her a box and inside the box is a shisa mask.

It’s finely carved in wood and strengthened with a seal carefully traced. A popular carnival mask among children in particular – protectors that keep bad spirits out and good spirits in depending on their mouths.

It’s painted blue with eyebrows like orange clouds and long fangs curving dramatically from its open mouth. 

Rain is already soaking the box, ruining it, and she brushes her thumb over the little curl by its nose and admires the way the colours fade into each other before carefully turning it around her fitting it to her face with a brush of chakra.

-

Blue remembers the words _Shinra Tensei_ and waking up in the ashes of Konoha. 

Remembers ripping arcs of paper from ANBU Turtle who never opens his eyes even as others stumbles to their feet around them.

Dead and gone and yanked back to life – children dug from beneath debris where they die from suffocation and ANBU Pig collapsing to her knees beside her niece split it two by a large rock that crushes everything below her ribs. 

-

Remembers Itachi who stands side-by-side with Madara, the body of his dead brother clutched to his chest and her Kage sinking to his knees in the mud.

-

“Why would you give me this?” Blue asks, brows dipping in confusion as she admires the lion-like mask with its mouth open in the roar of a protector.

"Why not?” Konan asks, her voice low and amber eyes glittering. “Don’t you like it?”

“No, that’s not-“ Blue shuts lid of the box, her knuckles white. “We’re _enemies_.”

“Of course we are.” Konan reaches out and Blue startles at the brush of pale fingers against her chin that tilts her head up. “You’re a curious thing, Blue, and we might be enemies, but I respect you.”

She stills as Konan leans forward, her eyes burning into hers. 

_“If Konoha won’t give you a proper mask to wear then I will.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... I really meant to get Shisui into this chapter I don't know what happened. 
> 
> ON THE NOTE OF KUNOICHI TRAINING: I did not understand what he was aiming for in canon at all. Flower messages? Communication like that implies that someone does it and someone reads it which makes zero sense when he crams the teams in a ratio of male/male/female. So, obviously it needs to be fixed because wat.
> 
> Blue isn't as fine as she likes to pretend she is (but what shinobi is) and we got a bit of Kakashi and Sakura in this chapter as well as Yoshino and Shikaku because they're cool and I'm having fun cultivating them as a couple and then as a family with Shikamaru and Blue. 
> 
> I kinda threw Sakura at T&I? I'm sure this is gonna end just _fine_.
> 
> A part of me feels like Shikamaru's avoidance echoes Itachi's but it's another thing entirely and we'll get to the root of things in either the next chapter or the one after that because Pein is coming up and Blue is still outside the village walls. 
> 
> I'm a bit iffish about this chapter but everything is _there_ so, eh.
> 
> I had to look for a thing in CATC and instead spent half an hour swearing into my pillow because I've been mixing tenses and there's at least 15 chapters left to clean. End me.
> 
> About to watch Riverdale. I hope that the strawberry cider I bought actually tastes like strawberries because the last two decidedly did _not_.
> 
> Cheers!


	6. Amegakure

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kijo = demoness

It’s Kisame who meets her just as Ame is a distant thing barely seen through the rain and there’s a tiny wet familiar thing beside him. 

Blue is glad for her mask – relieved of the way her hoodie casts a shadow over her eyes and the blur of the rain making everything harder to see. 

Kisame greets her in a black cloak with red clouds and for a moment she forgets where she is.

“Kijo-san!” Karin practically slams into her midriff, thin arms slipping around her waist and a small face pressing into her belly as she clings with surprising strength for someone so small. 

She’s still thin from weeks of starvation and there’s shadows in her eyes that will never go away but she’s looking healthier and happier and Blue stares down at her before she catches herself and crouches to get arm around small shoulders and pulls her tight against herself. 

“Has he been good to you?” she murmurs into shell of her ear and Karin nods, clinging even tighter. “Good,” Blue breathes and gently releases her, letting Karin hang tight as she raises to her full-height.

“I thought Akatsuki had fulfilled its purpose,” she calls to Kisame, inviting him to step closer as she raises a hand to her face and removes her mask, hanging it to her belt with a lick of chakra. 

“So you know then.” Kisame is a hulking man who towers nearly everyone he comes across – his skin an eerie echo of the creatures that dominate the Kiri seas and his eyes sharp and knowing. “Konan was quite insistent that you knew that Ame had reached the end of its Civil War despite the rest of the world believing elsehow.” 

“I have my ways.” She untangles herself from Karin who latches onto her hand, something stubborn and vulnerable in the eyes that meet hers for a moment before a scowl settles over her face. “Doesn’t answer my question.” 

“You should probably take it up with Pein-sama,” Kisame says easily. “He’s waiting for you.” 

“Because that’s not eerie,” she remarks with amusement. “I actually have a mission in Kumo but if the Kage of Amegakure has put aside time to meet with me who am I to decline?” 

Kisame gives her an assessing look, apparently unbothered by the way Karin weaves her fingers together with his.

“I think you are the first to acknowledge Pein-sama as a Kage outside the walls of the village,” he says after a moment, his gaze focusing on the rising tower in the distance. 

“Kirigakure is in shambles after their blood purges and their Mizukage is going to be struggling for years still to rebuild in that. Suna isn’t doing much better under their Kazekage who has gotten increasingly more paranoid during the years with the village suffering for it.” Blue tilts her head. “They might not want to acknowledge it but Kumo, Konoha and Iwa are the big players right now and if Pein and Konan plays it right they’re just at the time in history to rise and take a place among them.” 

Kisame wouldn’t have accepted a place in Ame if he didn’t see something in Pein and Konan and so he merely nods.

“They do need to figure out a good name though,” Blue muses absently as they get closer and closer to Amegakure. “Mizukage is already taken and Raikage as well. What more is there to associate with rain other than water and lightning?” 

“Mud,” Karin informs her bluntly.

“I’m not sure Pein wants to be known as the Dorokage,” Blue tells her in amusement.

“Rainbows then.” Karin angles her face up as Kisame makes a strange face.

“I can kinda see it,” Blue nods with mock consideration. “Pein, the Shodaime Nijikage of Amegakure.”

Kisame gives her a look that is filled with judgement when Karin appears to give it a through and careful consideration.

-

The large towering in the middle of Amegakure is a thing with faces straining from metal and a long curving tongue with a single shadow of a figure that vanishes in the second it takes for Blue to wipe water away from her eyes. 

It’s a village of industrialisation and quite different from the wooden buildings that dominate Konoha. There’s a heaviness in the air and the people who peer out at her in the company of Kisame and Karin, both in Akatsuki cloaks, her with her mask once again pulled over her face to avoid being recognised.

She’d already removed her hitai-ate and since she can't wear the gear of Konohagakure she is just in dark clothes with a heavy mesh shirt beneath it. But these people linger on her with burdened eyes and melts into their shops, visibly quieting at the sight of her.

“Amegakure doesn’t welcome outsiders,” Kisame says quietly as Karin stops to accept a peach from one of the stands. “But they trust Pein-sama and Konan-sama implicitly.” 

“I’m sure the cloaks help,” she responds, looking around her. “I can’t imagine just anyone gets to wear the tell-tale of the revolutionary army.” 

There are overhangs stretching above them to keep rain from flooding the wares and there are green leafy plants climbing up metal walls with the occasional blossoming flower in white. The closer they get to the middle the more bridges they cross, rivers sneaking through the village and drains that keep the streets from flooding.

There are no cats or dogs but she blinks at the sight of a large colourful lizard watching her with lazy eyes from one of the clothing stalls.

Nearly all people are wearing cloaks or long jackets that reaches nearly all the way to the knees with hoods pulled up – some in a strange blank fabric that makes the rain splash oddly against it.

She doesn’t ask about the children – or rather the lack of them – as she follows Kisame through the mouth of the tower and up the long winding stairs to a room marked by two large doors that he pushes open with a brush of chakra to the seal in the middle.

It’s a large room – more akin to a mess hall than anything else with tables, chairs and sofas. To the right is a kitchen with two fridges crowding side by side and there are paintings on the walls between the large one-way mirrors that act as windows.

Zabuza is there, as is Kakuzu who barely glances at her from where he’s bent over a table with Haku and a spread of sheets.

All of them wear Ame headbands and there’s something heavy in her chest – something like panic that sinks its fangs into her and makes it hard to remember how to breathe as she steps into the room as the only outsider.

She meets Konan’s eyes across the distance, feels the burn of those eyes as they linger on the mask on her face.

ANBU Weasel steps away from Kisame and Karin, the latter catching the former around her waist as she reaches for the Konoha-nin, and follows Konan through the door at the end of the room.

“I was surprised when Pein said you were at our borders,” Konan says, her voice carrying inside the metal walls as they climb the stairs that hums in a low blue light. 

“I’m supposed to be in Kumo,” she admits quietly as she removes her mask, clipping it onto her belt. 

Konan tilts her head to look at her from the corner of her eyes but offers no comment, just a brief hum. “You seem bothered by something,” she says instead.

“And you seem unbothered by the fact that you’re being open with a Konoha shinobi,” Blue slants a look at the other woman. “Not afraid I’ll tell on you?” 

“What reason would we have to keep something from you when you already know?” Konan says with a knowing look before she pushes the door to the office open and holds the door open for her. 

"Why indeed?” she murmurs, meeting amber eyes with a pull of her lips before stepping into the office.

The door closes behind her as she meets the ringed eyes of the man leaning against his desk, waiting. 

-

Pein is man who demands attention – his hair a shade of burnt orange that catches in the flickering light of the torches on either side of the desk behind him. He’s not overly tall or short and the black cloak with the red clouds are as much a statement as a trust that shouldn’t belong to a kunoichi of Konohagakure. 

“I find myself wondering,” she says, stopping in the middle of the room, “what Akatsuki will be to the people of Amegakure.” _And the rest of the world,_ she thinks but does not voice.

Pein and Konan know that she knows _something_ but she’s been getting more and more careful with her information as Konoha grows and the rest of the Elemental Countries struggles to match it. 

_Your Konoha is dead_ , something inside of her whispers, _don’t make a monster out of this one._

“Akatsuki liberated Amegakure.” Pein’s voice carries despite the smooth timber. “Is it not natural for it to be part of its future?”

Blue thinks of the _Kiri no Shinobigatana Shichinin Shu_ as she considers her response.

“Fair,” she agrees finally. “The children-“

“Alive,” Pein interrupts. “But carefully hidden.” 

“Except Haku and Karin.” 

“You wouldn’t have sent Karin to Kisame if you didn’t know exactly what that entailed.”

Pein meets her eyes evenly and she feels a small grin tugging at her lips before she remembers herself and lets it die.

“What do you think of Ame?” he asks, pushing away from his desk and Blue traces his path all the way to the window before considering her answer.

“I’ve barely seen anything of it yet,” she reminds him. “Tall metal buildings and strange lizard-cats isn’t nearly enough to judge anything by.” He slants her a look. “But the buildings are whole, there are people on the streets and there’s fruit in the stalls, clothing shops and something as simple as trinkets being sold,” she relents. “Ame is recovering well.”

Give it another three years and Ame would be strong enough to add to the ranks of prospective chunin in the exam held in Konoha.

Pein watches her for a long moment and Blue meets his eyes evenly.

“Have dinner with me." 

-

They eat at a small restaurant – the tables around them emptied and the chef bowing her head low as Pein clasps a hand to her shoulder with a low murmur as Blue admires the walls.

The walls might have been made of metal but someone had painted a large picture of a cherry blossom tree spilling its leaves and the atmosphere is warm, content, and there’s fish folded in large leaves on the grills. 

She’s changed into dark pants and a long-sleeved shirt, a borrowed cloak to keep the rain away and one of the servers removes it without meeting her eyes before they’re escorted to their table. 

Pein is regarded with wide-eyes and awe, hands being pressed to their hearts and soft brushes of his coat and Blue is starting to understand that being the Kami of Amegakure isn’t just an epithet but something real that blossomed in death and war.

She’s regarded with wariness but only a moment of hesitation before pots are boiling and fish being fried and she’s murmuring her thanks to an old man with braided beard and empty sockets who pats her shoulder before disappearing into the kitchen.

When the food arrives Pein pulls her plate to him and takes a bite of the fish, rice and vegetables and a long sip of the drink before sliding it over to her with the chopsticks neatly folded on the edge.

“Amegakure does not have a system in place for shinobi advancement,” Pein says after pressing a seal to the end of the table to prevent them from being overheard and Blue pauses for a moment before plopping a piece of carrot into her mouth. “The Civil War kept up for almost twenty years and while we have shinobi there are no ranks, no established system, and missions has been kept on the down low as we rebuild.”

Nothing surprising, Blue thinks, splitting a piece of fish and balancing it together with a ball of rice.

“ _You_ are a jounin of Konohagakure.” Pein’s look is lingering. “You’ve gone through the system, all the way from the Academy.”

A good Konoha shinobi wouldn’t entertain it. 

Pein is a clever man. He’s got Konan by his side and they have Kakuzu, a man renowned for his contacts and understanding of money. Additionally two of the Seven Swordsmen. It would take time to figure it out, trial and error considering none of them had any sort of conventional idea of the shinobi system, but they would find a way to make it work. 

Pein is a paranoid man and he’s playing a dangerous game keeping Ame under wraps – something that could potentially end really badly in a world of soldiers and death – and yet he’d turned to _her._

She’s known Konan and Pein for over three years now and she understands why he’s sitting across from her – understands the risk and frail trust he’s extending to her with the brush of black cloaks with red clouds.

“Buy me a drink,” she says, folding her chopsticks on the side of her plate. “And then we’ll talk.”

-

Blue gets her own guestroom in the tower and she’s half-asleep when there’s a dip and she breathes in sharply at the elbow in her stomach before Karin rolls over beside her with a sprawl.

“What are you doing here?” she murmurs, used to the way Shikamaru and occasionally Naruto bothers her in the middle of the night with sharp elbows and knobbly knees and already shifting to make room beneath the cover she’s tangled in. 

Karin accepts the invitation after only a brief moment, her toes cold where they brush against Blue’s thigh.

“Why didn’t you bring me to Konoha?” Karin asks her, voice low and unsure. “It’s your home, isn’t it?”

Blue tangles her hair in red hair, studying eyes that are too old for the face they look out through and sees familiarity in the horror hidden inside them – in starvation, a struggle for survival and broken hope. 

“Because I wanted to give you a chance to be the best you could be,” she admits softly.

Blue lets her hand fall between them and Karin reaches out, instead, to tangle their fingers together.

“Tell me about your family,” Karin demands. 

-

Blue tells her about Yoshino and Shikaku and Shikamaru who opens up their homes and hearts to someone who has nothing. Tells her about Itachi who loves to the point of madness and who learns to heal when he doesn’t want to hurt. 

Speaks softly about fondness and warmth and loyalty.

-

Doesn’t tell her about the man who presses a kiss to the cheek of her mask as they watch the sun go down over a world of ruin and the desperate love that burns inside her chest to this day.

-

Blue lingers in Ame for as long she dares before she accepts the blank scroll and its silent implication.

Gets escorted to the border by Haku who moves as silent as any ANBU worth their blood. 

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” she says, taking a bite of her peach. “But what pronouns do you prefer?” 

Haku is wearing a pretty violet kimono, hair loose and eyelashes painted dark. It doesn’t have to mean anything but Blue prefers to err on the side of caution.

“He and him,” Haku says, mouth curving up. “I appreciate you asking,” he tells her. “Most tend to just assume either way.” He’s got an umbrella folded up and traditional geisha sandals on his feet, a splash of colour against buildings of dark steel as life drains away from the streets around them the further away they get from the center. “But the only opinion that matters to me is Zabuza-sama’s.” 

Blue slants him a look from the corner of her eye, her opinion of Zabuza raising marginally, and she takes another bite of her peach with a low hum.

“Blue-san?” She pauses, mask half-way to her face. “Be careful.”

Blue waves a hand over her shoulder and Haku remains at the gates until she’s just a speck in the distance across the great expanse of water that surround Amegakure.

-

The ribcage beneath her concaves in a whoosh of air, her fist already half-way down the man’s throat with a snarl on her lips when a knife made of bone sinks into her shoulder.

The boy is a thin thing – hair white as bone and lines in red creeping beneath his eyes. 

Even as she tears the leader of the of the gang away from the naked body of the boy and tear tracked cheeks she’s forced to react to a threat she isn’t prepared for and he tears half of her back open before she manages to knock him out. 

The wound is deep and her pants are wet with blood as she stumbles out of a house put aflame. 

She know she needs to stop the bleeding to have any chance of getting away and struggles to get her shirt over her head and biting the inside of her cheek bloody as she backs towards the fire.

-

Stitching her back up is a clumsy thing with trembling hands and blurry vision as she cranes her body over the rippling surface of a lake. The skin in charred and cracking anew when she hooks the needle through it.

She swallows several mouthfuls of burning alcohol before pouring the rest of it down her back. 

Resists throwing the bottle into the lake and seals it back with a messy smear against her supply scroll already drenched in blood. 

Blue squeezes her eyes shut as she bites down on a blood replenishing pill. She keeps her breathing carefully regulated, one hand buried her hair as she stares out the water without actually seeing it. 

She’d thrown her ruined shirt at the nude body of the boy and she knows that she can’t leave him there – knows that she needs to check on the wound and count his heartbeats – but she’s trembling, her back still spilling blood despite the black stitches straining in a haphazard attempt in keeping her together. 

It isn’t the first time – isn’t the first child – but she keeps seeing Shikamaru’s tiny body, flashes of pink, red, black hair – and she buries her nails into her chest, tearing crescent sharps into her skin. 

-

Her mouth is dry and her head is pounding when she wakes beneath the blaring sunlight.

Every movement hurts and she knows without even opening her eyes that the wound on her back in infected – the skin warm against the tentative brush of her fingers. 

Getting to her feet is an agony but she’s done it before and she grabs for focus in the pain as she crosses the distance and sinks to her knees beside the boy still out cold.

The crusted blood on his face is the only wound she finds, the rest is a mix of hers and the man's, and she scrubs it best the best she can before dressing him in one of her spare shirts and then struggling into her own.

Her supply scroll is a mess, blood ruining ink, and she breathes out carefully as she glances at the boy.

The mission had been A-rank, a simple eradication of the new ‘weapon’ in the hands of the rivalling family of the Konoha Daimyo’s second cousin’s family. Nothing that was supposed to cause a stir.

The boy is twelve, maybe thirteen, and Blue doesn’t know what to do.

Karin had been one thing – no one would question the death of a bandit gang. But this was crossing lines of disobedience that would have repercussions if it was discovered that Konoha was the one behind it.

She’d put the entire compound in flames and she'd uses it to seal her back shut long enough for her to get a good distance from it but she’d been working through blood loss and cloudy vision.

She needs to get going sooner rather than later.

Blue dons her mask before hoisting the still unconscious boy over her shoulder and stumbling into the rocky terrain of Kumo.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's so little to go on from canon regarding Amegakure other than a kick-ass tower that I'm kinda in love with so I had to figure out what it might look like from an evolutionary perspective coupled with the aftermath of a pretty damn long war and what kind of people actually are in Ame at the moment.
> 
> Neither Kisame nor Zabuza are any help considering the ways in Kiri and Kakuzu is too old to have been part of the process so Blue is the perfect candidate. 
> 
> Konan and Pein are both very private people - rather like peeling two pair of onions. I hope he came across alright - I have all kinds of plans.
> 
> Do you have any headcanons about Ame? I have... ideas. We'll see how much of it I incorporate in this story.
> 
> Writing this while cleaning up CATC a bit so expect more updates soon.
> 
> Cheers!


	7. Bones and Mouths

ANBU Weasel has no idea what to do with the kid and the kid has no idea what to do with her but hauling him around with a worsening inflammation and a fever is turning out to be a bad idea. 

She has to gag him the moment he wakes up – aware of the anger burning red hot in his eyes and the whisper of trackers following them. 

He might think they’ll get him back and home to find another Master to serve but it is more likely that he’ll be blamed alongside her and killed on sight if he makes the tiniest sound to catch their attention. 

Her wound is worsening, her shirt sticky with red and yellow pus, and it’s so inflamed that she knows there’s little she can do to fix it. She’s out of alcohol and her understanding of medical chakra is about nil so all she can do is boil water to try and stave it off long enough to get help.

She knows the odds of making it out of this alive is worsening by the hour, the boy heavy on her shoulder and her brow wet wish perspiration as she navigates through fields of high reaching mountains and down long cave systems that she barely remembers the roads through.

Kumo is a labyrinth and with her mind muddled she has to back-track more than once, wasting precious time and energy.

-

Blue stumbles, boy tumbling off her back as the kunai slams into her shoulder and her vision explodes into a white hot roar of agony and a cry that barely gets swallowed by bone-deep discipline as she yanks it out and turns to lash out with lightning chakra that arcs wide and violent without any sort of control. 

Doesn’t have time to react to the blur of movement before a body collides into hers from the side.

There’s only years upon years of working through the worst sort of conditions that keep her from blacking out there and then as she twists herself around the body, getting her arm around their neck as they tumble to the ground in a roll with a twist of her body and a timed kick to misplace their footing.

She lands badly and the body beneath her is already straining against her grip – a hand clawing into the obvious target of her shoulder and digging deep. Blue can’t stop the automatic jerk back, loosening just enough for the other to slam a knee into her stomach and she chooses to move with it, shoving back and stumbling to her feet as the other shinobi watches her keenly.

Blue bares her teeth in a mockery of her mask behind it and folds her fingers into two familiar seals, feeling the way her chakra curls sluggishly through her system, brow wet with sweat that has nothing to do with the strain of movement. 

“Well?” she challenges, eyes alight. “That the best you got?”

Eyes narrow and ANBU Weasel slams her palms together in the moment it takes them to cross the distance between them, kunai drawn as they spin out of the path of her first attack, the second shoving clean through the palm of her left hand and she’s already folding backwards, her closed-toed boot colliding with their chin as her fingers fold down on the kunai with a burst of electricity.

It isn’t enough to kill or even stun but their arm pulls back in an involuntary cramp, the other rising to clasp at it as her foot collides and they tumble over themselves as she pulls through a trio of seals and slams her palm flat against the ground, the earth moulding into a spike shooting straight through their neck in a gurgle of blood, body slumping in a strange hanging position.

Blue doesn’t give herself time to react as she grabs for one of her own kunai and launches it towards the shinobi reaching out to slit the boy’s neck with a sharpening of wind chakra that makes it disappear into the man’s ribcage.

She grasps for the closest rock to keep herself from sinking to the ground while the man topples with fingers sinking into flesh with desperation as dark blood spews over his lips, disbelief written into his face as he draws his last breath with a wet gurgle.

She’s over extended her chakra reserves, already drained from fighting the inflammation, and Blue can feel her world toppling as she focuses desperately on the brush of white hair tickling at the edges of her consciousness and pushes away from the tree to sink to her knees beside him. 

Reaches over, digging deep with a squelch and pulling the kunai from the shinobi’s chest and reaching with a roll of vertigo and nausea for the bound hands.

Thinks she might have said something.

Doesn’t remember blacking out.

-

A part of her resents the crack of light, the squeeze of her eyes and the feel of her chest expanding and deflating against the grass that tickles her nose and the feel of small hands patting something on her back as she forces an eye open. 

“You almost died,” the boy informs her plainly when he notices her. 

Blue wonders when he’d gotten his hands on any sort of healing supplies but gives up in the face of her headache and settles for pushing against the ground with her good arm, getting into a haphazard sitting position as he shuffles away, just out of reach, eyes suspicious. 

There’s still red-lines beneath his eyes, two dots in place of his eyebrows, and Blue decides that it is probably related to his bloodline limit or some sort of clan mark, like the fangs of the Inuzuka. 

He’d made a knife out of his very bones and it had been sharp and hard enough to tear into her flesh like butter. It was no wonder he’d been wanted as a weapon – children with bloodline limits sold for high numbers on black market auctions. 

Blue never comments on the rows upon rows of bite marks on Karin’s arms and she says nothing about the strange white knife clutched between two palms as she breathes out carefully, testing the pull of the skin on her back. 

“I’m surprised you stuck around,” she comments idly as she reaches for the scroll of supplies in her pouch. “If I were you I would have been long-gone.” 

She feigns ease but her vision it spotty at best and she’s lost a lot of blood. 

She removes a skin of water from one of the few functional seals left. The one containing her pills are ruined completely but there's a handful left in her pouch. The most she gets out of the medical supplies are some bandages since she kept at least a roll each in every seal.

“You saved my life.” 

Blue cranes her head to look at her back, at the herb concoction he’d patted in place, and decides to take a chance as she starts winding the bandage around her ribs and chest. 

“You owe me nothing,” she tells him. “The decision and the consequences were mine to bear.” 

She struggles briefly to get it around her shoulder, the skin on her back pulling. But small hands plucks it out of her hand and Blue forces herself to remain still as he wraps the last bit up and ties it neatly.

“What will happen to me now?” he asks her, voice small.

Blue hides her trembling arms by folding them up.

“What do you want to do?” she asks him. “I’ve already failed my mission and your existence is pretty much erased by the fire. You’re too old to be accepted into most shinobi ranks but there are plenty of paths beyond it.” 

Karin is accepted into the ranks of Amegakure because of two things.

One: she’s _Uzumaki_. The red hair is a dead giveaway as is the frankly ridiculous amount of chakra for her age and there’s a reason they were hunted to near extinction.

Two: because it’s _Kisame_ who takes her under his wing.

Kisame sticks his loyalty and he sticks it tight – butchering the leader of the _Kiri no Shinobigatana Shichinin Shu_ after he’s found out to be selling information and leaving soon after the whole mess with the Mizukage.

It’s Kisame who recruits Zabuza and it is Kisame who takes Karin under his wing. 

Pein and Konan take their chances but they’re careful. Ten years is still young enough to influence but this boy is at least twelve, might even be thirteen going on fourteen - it’s always hard to tell with preteens when some grow like weeds while others remain short and stout for a long time. 

They might be extending their trust but there’s no way they’d accept another child, not with her involvement, no matter how thin their ranks had been left after the war. 

She’s a Konoha kunoichi and whatever they have between them is frail and she’s not about to risk it for this boy whose name she doesn’t even know. 

“What village are you from?” 

She blinks. 

“Konoha,” she says after a moment. 

He looks her dead in the eye.

“Anywhere _but_ Konoha.” 

Blue’s mouth twitches despite herself.

-

ANBU Weasel isn’t supposed to harbour soft spots for children.

But she was never supposed to live a second time either. 

It’s impossible to expect things to remain the same because she isn’t the same person she’d once been at eighteen and this world is nothing like it had once been.

-

Blue reaches out and snags the boy by the collar of his shirt and takes to the air as the earth beneath her explodes.

He twists out of her grip and stretches out his hand - bone pieces exploding out from the tips of his fingers at the first sign of blond hair and Blue lands on a tree branch, content to let them handle it after identifying the threat. 

She’d kept an absent ear out for information on Deidara but he was still young and she has a vague recollection of his recruitment having been made during duress. 

The Iwa headband on his forehead had a thick, deliberate, scratch through it and Blue leans carefully back against the trunk of the tree as she considers the situation.

The boy was thinner than he was supposed to be – visible even under the rippling fabric of his shirt as he threw himself after the other who twisted to intercept the blow of the kunai. 

Likely he hadn’t been prepared for the life of nukenin – too young to understand even if it looked preferable to the harshness of Iwa. Especially when he shared the hair of the Yondaime Hokage who was revered with a deep sated hatred by the people of his home village and then coupled with the mouths on his hands from his bloodline limit. 

A wounded kunoichi and a pale sickly looking boy would have made for a good target by desperate eyes. 

It was too bad that her unwilling companion, for all that he looked, had been a weapon in the making and Blue was… well, ANBU, for all that her mask looked like a shisa lion. 

“You shouldn’t play with him,” she calls when the white haired boy draws blood for the second time. 

She’s not prepared for the absolute loathing in Deidara’s eyes when he spins towards her. “Don’t look down on me!” he snarls. “One day I’m going to be the best shinobi there is and people like you will have no choice but to respect me, yeah!” 

The other boy actually pauses to stare at him and Blue–

Blue has _ideas_. 

-

Blue ties them together and leaves them near the border of Suna with a brush of her palms against her knees to rid of the sand from digging two preteen-sized holes. 

The white haired boy's gaze promises a slow death as she spins, walking backwards.

“It’s all about teamwork!” she shouts. “I’d hurry though – there’s a sandstorm about two hours away to the west!”

Deidara swears something so vividly that it startles a laugh out of her as she turns and disappears over the dunes, skidding over the sand with chakra that strains despite the crunch of two chakra pills burning through her system.

Out of the way she grasps at her shoulder, fingers digging tight and smile dying.

She needs to get to Itachi.

-

Her Kage never once tells her he forgives her.

She thinks about bringing it up – thinks about asking. 

But she’s ANBU Weasel and he’s her Kage. 

She has no right to demand anything of him.

(She’s not sure she wants to hear the answer anyway). 

-

Blue sinks against the large rock, eyes squeezed shut and trembling from a mixture of exhaustion and fever as she palms off her mask and seals it away before letting her head fall back against the rough surface. 

She’s two hours away from one of the southern guard stations near Konoha which means she just got to stick tight and await someone to find her.

The wound on her back is ugly – deep and weeping pus despite the concoction the boy had bound it with and she’d been forced to scrape it all off to clean it out with boiled water which had done little to stave the inflammation. 

Her Kage had once dragged her for nine hours straight before practically frying her alive with Kurama’s chakra in an attempt to keep her alive and she suspects it had stolen some ten years off her lifespan and killed off all the nerves in her upper thigh. 

It had been the sort of bastardized thing that had made them both face the reality of their situation and he’d been quiet for days afterwards, hovering over her and trying to force her to accept the bigger portion of their meagre meals. 

If she died he’d be alone with no one but Kurama to accompany him and for a man like her Kage it would have been a fate far worse than death. 

She hadn’t understood it then – she’d lost everything with the destruction of Konoha but she tells herself that there’d been little to lose anyway and kneels down before her Kage, promising him what little she has as he stares at her with tears dripping from his chin. 

But she watches a Konoha that isn’t hers growing around her and she realises that she’d lost far more than she’d been willing to admit to. 

Blue looks at the blue sky above her and wonders if she’s foolish to long for something long gone.

Her Konoha might not have been the best but it’d been _hers_.

ANBU Weasel is born from that loyalty and she remains by her Kage’s side because of it. Becomes _something_ when Blue D had been _nothing_.

Takes missions no one wants and ends lives with the only kindness she can offer them – silent as a shadow in the night and dead before eyes can open in surprise. 

In this Konoha she’s requested while being denied and there’s danger in her correspondence with the God and Angel of Amegakure that crosses into the territory of betrayal with a lost girl and an empty scroll. 

“What am I doing?” she asks the silence.

-

She’s half-asleep when a small stone collides with her boot and she startles awake, lightning flaring from her fingers before she zeroes on the instigator and lets it frizzle off.

“Shisui,” she greets, wiping sweat from her brow against her shoulder. “Fancy seeing you here.” 

“You’re in a right state, huh?” He crouches down before her. “You’ve been missing for almost four weeks – Itachi has been quite beside himself with worry, even if he pretends otherwise.”

 _Four weeks._

It was a long journey from Kumo to Konoha during the best of circumstances and she’d been out of it for long moments between bouts of lucidity but four weeks – that was a long time to drop off the map. 

If it hadn’t been for the smear of herbs drawing the worst of the inflammation she’d likely be dead.

She huffs a breath. 

“Small mistake with bigger consequences than I anticipated,” she admits with a grimace. 

“We checked out the house first – everything was burnt to the ground,” Shisui says with a little tilt of his head, curls flopping. “We erased the last of the evidence of any Konoha involvement.” 

“I’d thank you but it means you stole my excuse to get out of Itachi’s tender care,” she says wryly.

Shisui’s mouth twitches into a smile as he reaches into his pocket for an orange which he splits in two, easily peeling it and offering them to her as he folds down on the ground, legs crossed in a more comfortable position.

“Kotetsu and Izumo should be here soon – none of us are healers but Kotetsu is handy with a bandage and we’ll be back to Konoha before nightfall. Think you’ll manage?” 

Blue hums – wincing at the tanginess of the fruit but knowing that starting slow after being unconscious for so long was the only way to go to avoid puking it all up. 

“Look, I’m not going to apologize for last time.” Shisui squeezed the last half of the orange into a pouch of water he digs from his backpack before handing it over. “I don’t like these secrets and Itachi can pretend all he wants but the way he’s been clinging to Sasuke ever since your talk isn’t normal and I don’t like it.” 

Blue swallows the water in three slow gulps before putting it down, feeling marginally better with something in her belly and her mind clearing just enough to keep her from slumping over. 

“You’re a good friend, Shisui,” she says after a moment. “I don’t blame you for the way you reacted – I probably deserved worse. Itachi is still hurting, he probably won’t ever stop hurting, but it is not my place to tell why and, on order of the Yondaime Hokage, I cannot tell you why even if I wanted to.” She meets his eyes, makes sure to hold his gaze. “I wish it could have been different.”

Shisui makes a noise, something like a sharp inhale and a short laugh. “How am I supposed to be angry at you when you’re so damn-“ He cuts himself off, dragging a hand through the ridiculously adorably curls on his head. “Just shut up and keep not-dying and we’ll be fine.”

She pops another piece or orange into her mouth with a small grin.

-

Itachi isn’t overly impressed at the sight of Shisui stepping into his office with her riding piggyback, the front of her shirt wet with perspiration and smiling despite looking ready to puke – something Shisui had warned her against repeatedly.

“Hello Itacchin.” He slips around his desk to press his hand against her forehead, the familiar green glow making her relax. _“I got lost on the road of life.”_

It’s really too bad that Kakashi hadn’t picked up on the famous words but she’s dead sure that if she repeats it enough someone will pick up on it. 

Maybe she could get Naruto in on it? 

Make him whisper it in Kakashi’s ear enough times to make it slip out? 

Itachi yanks her shirt up and Shisui snorts at her surprised noise as fingers prod along the still inflamed wound. She makes to turn around to give him a look but Shisui gives her thigh a little pinch and a little shake of his head when she slants him a look.

Green chakra glows to life behind her and it comes with a strange itchy kind of burn. Her hand clenches and unclenches in Shisui’s shirt but it soon disappears in a wash of numbing chakra and her eyes flutter shut, arm falling loosely against his chest as she slumps into a dead sleep on his shoulder.

“Where did you find her?” Itachi asks quietly as he cuts through the badly made stitches keeping cracked and burnt skin shut, the skin strained and swollen with inflammation. 

He scrapes some of the remaining herbs in the wound aside to take a look at later. 

“Near the borders, actually, close to one of the small crossroads leading to Suna and Kuza.” 

“Hn.”

Itachi knows perfectly well that Blue’s interest in anything medical didn’t extend past bandages, pills and those thicker-than-normal black stitches she claimed kept things _in place_ which meant someone else had been involved, however briefly. 

Knowing that Blue’s nature was to keep mum he sealed it away before directing his cousin along towards one of the free hospital rooms where he helps deposit her gently on her stomach.

“Can you contact Tsunade-shishou?” he asks quietly and Shisui slips out of the room with a brush of fingers against his hand – recognising what his cousin was really asking for. 

Itachi seats himself on the side of the mattress, starting at the scars etched into dark skin and the heavy stress lines under her eyes.

Itachi sees the way Blue watches the world around her – as if it’s getting stranger and stranger with every return to the village. Sees the way she doesn’t protest but welcomes the long mission outside the village walls, pressing the time on every mission and returning home with heavy steps. 

The distinction of _her world_ as opposed to _their world_.

Her brow dips and he worms another tendril of chakra through her system, quieting her mind and sending her into a deeper sleep just as the door clicks open and he turns to his _shishou_ as she steps inside with a click of her heels against the floor – door slamming shut in the face of the temporary assistant that was there courtesy of Shizune’s vacation.

“Infection,” he greets. “The scarring is going to be bad.” 

“You’re worried about her,” Tsunade observes just as bluntly, waving him off the bed, hand already aglow with green chakra. 

“She’s my friend,” he says simply, watching as she pulses her chakra, burning away at the inflammation that had left the wound swollen and weeping. 

Normally he would have done it himself but he had a long operation coming up that afternoon and he knew he needed to conserve his energy for it. Mending shattered bones was hard in the first place but this patient had the majority of his body below the navel crushed to splinters and had only survived out of sheer luck and quick intervention from his teammate.

It was a risky operation but Itachi knew there was a chance to save his legs from the knee up to allow prosthetics made rather than amputate by the crotch. Tsunade had helped him prepare for it and he knew he couldn’t linger for long.

“Was she conveniently missing for the first aid lessons?” Tsunade tugs the stitches out, looking like she’d rather burn them to bits than drop them onto the waiting tray. “ _Both_ of them?”

Itachi’s mouth twitched. “Blue seem to operate on the idea that if it can’t be stitched or burnt shut it’s a lost cause.” 

“Everyone can be taught,” Tsunade says with a mild tone Itachi knows better than to trust. “Even old dogs like us.”

Itachi considers his teacher at the words spoken so readily in acknowledgement of Blue’s mental age and makes a soft noise of amusement.

They were rather alike, weren’t they? Neither were what they appeared to be – Blue not much younger than Tsunade mentally and while Tsunade appeared somewhere in her late twenties Blue was stuck at eighteen but slowly gaining.

“She’ll live,” Tsunade tells him. “Go rest – your operation is coming up.” 

Itachi hesitates.

“There’s a free bed right there.” She gives her head a little jerk to the side. “I’ll get that annoying cousin of yours to keep an eye on your both once I’m done.” 

Itachi touches a hand to one of his pigtails and hides a smile as he tugs off his cloak.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is so indulgent, I swear. 
> 
> Mostly world building away - this won't actually start properly until we hit the start of canon when Naruto takes his first steps into this changed world. Blue has her fingers and toes dipped in more pies than she's about to admit to and she's playing a very, very dangerous game. 
> 
> I have no idea how Kimimaro and Deidara ended up being a thing - it just sorta stumbled upon me and now I have plans. It happens. 
> 
> I recently found an old chaptered thing on my computer and fell a little bit in love with. It got worse once I started cleaning it up and I got _invested_. So it's probably going to end up way longer than the ten chapters that were already there. Won't post it before CATC or Ouroboros is finished - might if I accidentally finish it on the side though. We'll see. 
> 
> Next chapter we'll get back to the aftermath of the mission gone wrong and Shikamaru I do believe. 
> 
> I've been stuck with the worst case of writer's block coupled with whatever my brain ain't producing today and I'm trying to convince myself that I just need to upload this and get to the next chapter and it will all be _fiiiiine._
> 
> Let me know what you think - I'm always up for bouncing ideas and thoughts.
> 
> Cheers!


	8. Shikamaru

It lies in shinobi nature to lie and it would be foolish to claim elsehow but there is a person they are always expected to be truthful to and that is their Kage. Be it Hokage, Kazekage, Mizukage, Raikage or Tsuchikage – a shinobi owes their alliance to the village that births them, raise them and commands them.

ANBU Weasel’s loyalty belongs to her Kage and her Kage only.

She might have served the Sandaime and the Godaime but for three years she belongs to her Kage in the absence of a village and after his death she clings to it for what does a promise mean if he stops to matter?

-

She meets the eyes of the Yondaime Hokage and she does not kneel, does not raise her fist to her heart, because her Kage is dead but her loyalty is true and he has never asked it of her.

“Yondaime-sama,” she acknowledges respectfully.

“Blue.”

 _Blue_. Not ANBU Weasel.

She does not look at the wall and the mask that hangs there, paint untouched by the violence of the battlefield.

She’d failed the mission, had gone missing for four weeks and made an unreasonable mess of a simple mission ordered by someone of political interest. She understands the machinations well enough even if she’s never liked it and she knows she has to face some sort of punishment for the Yondaime to play well with the people that matter.

“You must understand that you’ve put us in something of a situation,” he says to her as he leans back against his desk in an echo of another man who’d looked at her with another sort of intensity.

There is something genuine in the crease of the other’s brow – something that has survived despite his years as a Kage. A willingness to sacrifice but demanding a reason for it and an unwillingness to compromise the good of Konoha for a taste of power.

It is something she respects while understanding how dangerous that makes her position in the machinations of things.

How does a man like Namikaze Minato find the balance between the good for a village and the death of those barely out of their parents’ arms?

He must surely ask himself the same thing and she wonders if he sees the village dead and gone in the reflection of her eyes – what had been, something that doesn’t fit into the new Konoha.

Wonders if that’s why he requests her - because she represents something already compromised in her morals, her hands already stained.

Or she’s being unfair and he thinks nothing of the sorts.

ANBU Weasel says nothing, waiting for him to elaborate in the silence as he studies her with an echo of another pair of eyes in the same shade of blue.

“Walk me through it.”

Blue carefully erases any trace of Kimimaro or Deidara from the tale as she spins it and takes another step on the path of no-return.

-

“So?” It’s Shisui who asks – leaning on Itachi with his chin on his shoulder with an easy air that contrasts against the tenseness of the other as he peers up from his paperwork. “What did he saddle you with?”

“B-rank mission for a month and Izumo will be my shadow for two,” she admits, closing the door behind her.

It’s a milder punishment than she’d expected but it also means that she has a partner for a foreseeable future and she hasn’t had one of those since her genin days the first time around.

She was good at operating under command and being her own commander but partnership? She knew Kamizuki had requested her to get the experience for the upcoming jounin exam but she hadn’t seriously considered accepting it and now it had been forced upon her instead.

Blue wonders where in the grand-schedule of things Kamizuki had done a turn – he’d been pretty infamous alongside Hagane as gate guards and valued assistants of the Godaime.

Decides that it doesn’t matter as she sprawls face-down on the stiff sofa Itachi kept in his office and took a moment to just soak in the familiar smell of her friend and the lingering sting of antiseptic that clung to the hospital corridors and its rooms.

Twitches at the soft brush of fingers against her cheek and opens one eye to peer up.

“Shisui left to fetch some food for us,” Itachi murmurs, unapologetically seated on the floor with his fancy haori pooling around him.

 _We’re alone_ , is what she hears and she draws a shuddering breath and tilts into his touch with eyes squeezed shut and confessions that can never be voiced knotting in her throat.

“I’m sorry,” she tells him.

_For telling you about the Itachi of my world, for keeping secrets, for not being a better friend._

“A month is a long time,” he says gently. “You had plenty of time to finish a simple assassination mission.”

She closes her eyes.

If there’s anyone who’ll figure her out it is Itachi.

She’s allowed him close – closer than anyone since her Kage. She’s never made an effort to hide from him and she knows that if he only voices the question there is a part of her that will rise to answer.

But he doesn’t ask her.

Not today.

Instead he cards gentle fingers through her hair and hums quietly with a rustle of paper as he settle to read through his reports.

-

Itachi signs her out from the hospital a day later after giving her back one-last check-up and making her promise to come over to the Uchiha compound for lunch in a week.

She lingers unsurely on the steps of the bright white building – waving absently at Gai when she spots him coming around the corner.

“Blue-san!” He’s an interesting man – bright and honest and quite something in the way he could measure against Kakashi with only taijutsu as his art of choice. “Just the person I was looking for!”

“Gai.” She grins at him. “What’s new?”

“I have decided to take the honourable path of a teacher next year and was just approved by Yondaime-sama!” He gives her a thumbs-up and a flash of teeth and she swears that this man is the most well put-together ex-ANBU she’s had the pleasure of meeting.

ANBU Turtle had been quite infamous in her world but the mask had been picked-up by others after him unlike the mask of Hound that had remained on the shelf in anticipation of Kakashi stepping back into his role of ANBU Commander.

Of course, that hadn’t been the way here.

Kakashi had never joined but Gai had been ANBU Commander for several years and only recently stepped down permanently into the ranks of tokubetsu-jounin as a taijutsu specialist.

In this world it is the mask of Turtle that remains on the shelf, waiting.

She hadn’t known Gai personally but he’d been pretty infamous and maybe there is something sharper and viper-like in this man than what had been – tempered only by his friendship with Kakashi that had remained true in both worlds.

His hair is longer in the back, braided to fall into a loose crown over the bowl-cut, but the green leotard and the orange leg- and arm warmers are the same and the jounin vest suits him.

“About to corrupt some kids?” she asks in amusement as she falls in step with him, responding to the twitch of his fingers with a curl of her thumb. “If you’d waited another year you could have stolen Sakura right out from Kakashi’s oblivious nose.”

“My glorious rival only need a little nudge to follow me on this path,” Gai answers, visibly amused.

“Yondaime-sama has him slotted for it already, doesn’t he?”

She knows he does – there was no-one else who could teach those three kids and they were pretty enamoured with him already in that we-are-the-only-ones-who-can-mess-with-him kind of way that promised to drive Kakashi up the walls once they officially became his.

Gai brushes a thumb over his nose in confirmation, calling it for Aburame Rei when he spies her across the street.

Young and long-legged and awkward-looking with thin eyebrows and hair buzzed off in favour of a dark bandana. If it hadn’t been for the flat unimpressed eyes Blue would have thought her a bit dull when she’d happened upon her when picking up the kids at the Academy where Rei volunteered as an assistant.

“Ah. You.” There’s no derision in her voice and her voice is decidedly sleepy which doesn’t match with the flat words. “Are you finally going to talk with Shikamaru-kun today?”

Blue blinks when lidded eyes settle upon her with judgement.

“He wants to talk to me?” she echoes in bemusement.

Beside her Gai makes the sign for SECRET and MISSION with a twitch of his little finger to keep the conversation going.

Blue supposed that explained why she’d seen no-one except Itachi, Shisui and Tsunade before finding herself in the Yondaime’s office.

Which meant that Gai flagging her down hadn’t been by chance.

Shinobi work at its finest.

“He’s been asking about you,” Rei says in a low drawl. “Said something about having an answer to something.” She shrugs, shoulder hunching down after the brief movement. “It’s been a month, he’s been quite worried even if he pretends otherwise.”

They bid goodbye after some brief chatter, dominated mostly by Gai asking about three students in particular (his future genin then) and Blue starts putting pieces together at the sound of a familiar name.

“Before the mission Shikamaru was spending time with a girl named Tenten,” she says, patiently waiting as Gai browses through a t-shirt store, measuring a deep blue thing with orange stripes against his chest thoughtfully. “That wouldn’t happen to be your new genin Tenten, would it?”

Gai pays, accepting the bag with a bright flash of teeth to the storeowner.

“Your little brother and my genin-to-be appears to have become close friends,” Gai says, lowering his volume just a tad while keeping a spring in his step that she easily matches. “And so I know that the two of them have gotten into some trouble attempting to locate you in the village – making something of a mess in the jounin longue before recruiting Sakura-san and Naruto-san into helping and-“

“- then getting into an even worse of a mess,” she finishes and Gai nods, waving enthusiastically to a woman in a kimono who makes a twitchy sort of ANBU greeting as she turns with a fake flush to her civilian target who looks gleeful.

She doesn’t ask why no-one had been informed about her being in the hospital because she’s sharp enough to work the pieces.

She’d been missing for four weeks, had spent another one recuperating in the hospital in Itachi’s private room before being slotted into Yondaime’s office where she had to walk through the story nine times, getting wiggled for every detail before the man leaned back and let her know what sort of punishment she could expect.

She’d been tagged as a _risk._

Any information that could put a Konoha shinobi at the place of the fire had to be erased and such a kunoichi returning with a burnt back was better kept on the down-low.

She hadn’t been about to say anything anyway, ANBU had ingrained the need for quiet, but she could understand the caution. And she appreciated Gai’s way of doing it – recognising the concern but also thoughtfulness behind it while essentially briefing her on her – on her brother and already showing an active interest in his future students.

For all intent and purpose she’d been recorded as being back in the village a month ago – likely at the time the papers of the fire appeared on the Yondaime’s desk. Shikamaru was too clever to go about raiding around the village for her without that information being available to him in some capacity. Most likely through Yoshino and Shikaku – clan heads weren’t exceptions to cover stories, after all, even as a façade.

A month was a long time to a child however brief it was to her. They didn’t perceive time she same way adults did, she’d discovered, so it wasn’t strange that it had become something of a situation.

It did mean that she had to scramble for an explanation for not appearing at the Nara compound for a month despite ‘being back in the village’.

Which was why Gai was dragging her along for a shopping tour in the civilian district, she supposes, lifting her arms as the man gallantly sweeps a sash around her waist with a thoughtful hum.

-

She does not buy a sash but she does end up with a rough hand-knitted sweater that looks like it had been made with some fifty different yarns the way it goes from a basis of a thick grey thread to thin orange and brown to green to blue to red – all in different shades.

The old lady selling it had practically forced it over her head as Gai was talking to the grandchild who had looked horrified at their grandmother’s actions while Gai had been visibly delighted.

Blue had paid in full and taken the time to compliment it – signing most in close proximity to squinting eyes after realizing the woman was deaf and nearly blind.

She’d promised to stop by for tea in two days and had been told to bring cake with a firm poke to her chest by a very delighted grandma.

Some sell civilians short but Blue likes them. It takes something to live alongside shinobi and many might be frightened and cautious and downright spiteful of them but it was never a one-sided thing. Shinobi tended to look down on civilians with an attitude better suited for a parent staring down an unruly child.

There was a reason ANBU tended to go under disguise more often than jounin and chunin who were the faces outwards. Most didn’t spend enough time looking – lacking an understanding of civilians and thinking a simple poof and change of shape was enough to get them past anyone.

As if gait, expression, familiarity and actions didn’t matter in a village where civilians made it their business to know the on goings of their neighbours just to avoid such a thing.

Blue had made her acquaintance with a good chunk of people related to the Red Light district but also certain shop owners and a tea owner down in the South District who made it her business to know other’s businesses.

Had spent time to incorporate different travel disguises and that of a pleasure lady in Konoha courtesy of the Madam who was more than happy to keep her cover for her for a monthly sum.

Likewise she kept in contact with the soft-bellied Rhan and the tattoo-lady in Suna by offering further business to finish her sleeve and had a running underground contact in Kuza who refused name or face but who was firm and as honourable such a contact could be.

Mostly she ran her contacts through Red Light districts or orphanages– she liked them better and offered her service in return if there ever was a client who got too rough or anyone wanting to adopt for the wrong reasons, sparing their expanse of hiring shinobi for something, that to her, meant little trouble for a large gain.

Money and an extended hand could go a long way with those that had little.

It was a more recent project of hers – starting somewhere after her first contact with Konan and Pein but it was paying off rather well. It had begun with just keeping an eye on Ame and grown into a small network of her own to keep an ear out for Madara among other.

She’s still been in simple shinobi pants and shirt from the hospital so she wiggles into the knitted sweater with pleasure and bids Gai goodbye an hour later as she steers her steps towards the Nara compound.

-

ANBU Weasel learns love from a boy who has lost everything and who has to make the choice between her and a mad man with dust of loved ones still clinging to his hair.

She understands loyalty and she understands necessity but her stint with a team is a short-lived thing and she has lost nearly all contact with them at sixteen - stilted conversations exchanged and quickly forgotten as ANBU swallows her deeper and deeper until one day it is all gone and the blood on her hands is nothing but a dirty stain on her soul that won’t go away.

She will never forget the sight of Konoha levelled under the rampage of the Bijuu under the control of Madara Uchiha and she will never forget the look in her Kage’s eyes upon waking up to ash and dust and a stranger by his side.

There is nothing like the hopelessness and grief of staring at something and realising that your life had amounted to _nothing._

-

The soldier known as ANBU Weasel was never supposed to be mentioned positively with children.

She’s still young when her sensei sees something inside of her and puts her on a path of child murder and her hands are so stained by her eighteenth birthday that she can’t scrape the blood off her hands.

When she’s twenty-one she meets former ANBU Mouse in the village – a man who places himself in front of his wife and child and meets her eyes with threat and warning but also **fear.**

Fear of what she’s capable of. Of what she’s become.

She bows her head stiffly and comes to understand better the rumours surrounding ANBU Weasel and the way certain members avoid her.

But in this world she has a small boy who looks up to her and calls her Blue-nee and she hardly knows what to do with him – doesn’t know how to be _right_ when everything ANBU Weasel is would be _wrong_.

“Shikamaru.”

He’s getting closer to graduation age and she finds that she worries when the path had once seemed so clear-cut and obvious. Finds doubt where there had always been surety – a rightness of his path, the fond words of her Kage lingering in the back of her mind even as the tiny body is too young to do much but drool all over her shirt.

A sense of regret she doesn’t understand when she teaches him to be silent and where to strike.

He stares up at her and he looks so small in her stolen shirt, long enough to reach past his knees, a small clumsily made braid by his ear and hands clenched in the covers of his bed.

“You _left_.” His voice is threaded with accusation but also something unsure and questioning that makes her tilt her head. “You said – you told me to go _home_ but this is your home too and you didn’t-“ And there’s the anger – or maybe frustration, a mix of the two in the dark eyes of the boy. “I know what you do,” he says abruptly, and there’s vulnerability in his eyes. “I know that you – I know that you kill _children_.”

Blue D takes a step forward.

“I heard – I heard Yondaime-sama and – and I know –“ Frustration. “I know that you _specialized_ in it – in _killing children_ and I – “ Tiny fingers curling. “I know killing is a part of being shinobi but – but it’s _you_ and I can’t – I can’t-“

She crouches down by the side of the bed and he looks at her with tears in his eyes – tears of frustration and anger and broken trust.

“You’re supposed to be _good_ ,” he says with all the helpless faith of a child.

ANBU Weasel has seen the children of monsters begging for their parents lives – had nearly lost her life to a boy who had lashed out to protect his rapist - because children love in ways adults aren’t capable of.

“You will learn that good and evil will mean little in the service of our Kage’s.” She flexes her fingers. “There will always be someone out there who has to take the burden of the mission – who has to make decisions that aren’t good but practical and right for the future of their village.”

“You didn’t deny it.”

Blue hesitates before sighing, dragging a hand through her braids as she turns to look out the window.

“Would you believe me if I told you I’m nearly forty-years-old?”

Silence save for a stuttered breath.

“My parents were killed when I was very young and I spent my childhood in an orphanage. When I graduated at ten I was put in an apartment of my own and had a brief stint with a team that didn’t last long. I was ANBU by fourteen and I was good at following orders, no matter what was demanded of me. I came to specialize in the murder of children on the suggestion of my sensei.”

She pauses.

“I could have denied it – could have chosen something else, I suppose. I’ve justified it by quick kills, in their sleep if I can get away with it, but the situations are seldom so simple and I’ve done bad things on the orders of the Sandaime Hokage and Godaime Hokage in the name of Konohagakure without regret.”

She meets his widening eyes.

“I was twenty-eight when my Kage sent me back in time,” she tells him and it’s like a weight being lifted from her chest. “I didn’t ask to be returned – I was done. ANBU Weasel was – _done_. But I woke up six-years-old again and your parents – somehow they found it in themselves to accept me into their home, into their lives and into _yours_.” She looks at her hands, at the flecks of blood that never go away no matter how she scrubs. “A thirty-plus ex-ANBU stuffed into the body of a child,” she snorts. “Most would have thrown me out the moment they could but not –“ She tugs at a braid. “So much have changed,” she breathes. “I’m the remnant of a world long gone where I never had a family, never had a little brother, barely had a team –“

She draws a sharp breath.

“I love you, Shikamaru,” she tells him honestly. “More than I ever thought myself capable of but I’m not a good person – I am too old, have done too much to ever claim that.”

The silence falls between them, tense and expectant and Blue curls and uncurls her hands – refusing to look at the boy and -

“You’re older than kaa-san and tou-san-”

Blue twitches at the small hand that reaches out to tug on one of her braids.

“- Blue- _obaasan_.”

Blue closes her eyes, breathes deep and snorts.

"I said forty not sixty, _Shika-bo_."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Blue is frustrated and dealing with a bad hand in a situation she never asked to be in and she's up to her ears in it.
> 
> She also has zero concept of what is child appropriate and tend to operate on the assumption of them being mini-adults with bad understanding of time which we get a load of here. Lucky for her Shikamaru is smart boi.
> 
> She's... uh... learning.
> 
> Most of the things Blue filters from him is swears and information pertaining herself and her world. We'll... get back to this.
> 
> It's called _development_ and I'm a fan.
> 
> The Shikamaru situation is far from handled and he's gonna have a lot to think about and _Blue_ \- lying to the Yondaime Hokage himself? 
> 
> Important to keep in mind that Blue is an unreliable narrator because of... stuff. She's trying, you guys. But just - keep it at the back of your minds when reading.
> 
> And where the heck did Kushina go - quality content right there and I haven't written her in forever. I also need more Konan and Pein soon but we're dealing with all sorts of things here and just want to get us to the chuunin exam.
> 
> But, one thing at the time. Foundations and all that - need good, rational basics to ground our world development on.
> 
> I keep having to bite my fingers from starting a BNHA fanfic on the side because _wow_. My brain is having ideas. Many of them.
> 
> Have a test tomorrow (missed one history test and here I am) and then an actual whole week off?? What is this magic. 
> 
> Let me know what you think in the comments! Always up for discussion - lot's of stuff happening here as we trudge along.
> 
> Cheers!


	9. A Play For Secrets

ANBU Weasel is born from the ambers of her parent’s death at the hands of her mother’s family.

She spends too many years angry, lost and struggling in an empty apartment until ANBU swallows her up and she becomes the person her parent’s murderer couldn’t lower themselves to be.

 _“How do you feel?”_  her sensei asks her.

 _“I don’t know,”_ she answers and seals the fate of her life, eleven-years-old and the victim of a broken system.

It’s a wonder it isn’t Ne that gets her first.

-

”Anko tells me you’ve been gossiping about me,” Blue comments dryly, kicking out and dropping into the chair with as much as wave to the company, intent on Genma who snorts into a cherry red concoction that smells heavy of vodka.

“Your advancement reflects on me.” Genma doesn’t even attempt to deny it. “Let me take my credit in peace.” 

“I hear you got off easy.” Raidou slides a lime green thing past her, into the waiting hands of Gai. “Izumo was quite pleased.” She gives him a blank look. “We were on the same team back in the day. Cacti or cherry?”

“I miss those days,” Gai says fondly, already half-way undressed with Kakashi looking long-suffering beside him without pants and shirt, just two card-games short of getting out of his mask. 

“No melon?” Raidou holds up two bottles. “Cherry then.” Blue drags a hand through her braids, noticeably shorter from her stint with the fire and melted together in places, knowing she needed to stop and get them fixed but dragging it out. “But yeah – two months and only B-rank for the first half.”

“Izumo-san is joining the jounin exam, isn’t he?” Ebisu asks, pushing his glasses up with a knowing look. “But Kotetsu-san isn’t.”

It’s prime shinobi gossip, gaining him more than one pair of interested eyes as Gai deals another round, finger twitching and her head inclining before he deals her a pile too before settling back.

Hanafuda is a game that Yoshino and Shikaku are particularly fond of, their cards specially designed and gifted to them by Ibiki on their tenth wedding anniversary, and Blue would recognise the artstyle anywhere. It doesn’t make her less amused by the little pug staring back at her with dramatic ear flopping, autumn leaves in the wind and a pair of familiar legs just behind him.

On another a character with messy white hair is floating on a lake beneath the summer sky, crotch barely covered, a single arm outreached to tangle in the collar of an enormous fluffy dog, the other thrown over the lower half of his face, and she raises her gaze to quirk an eyebrow at Kakashi.

“My colleagues are all assholes.” Is what he offers.

“They were a gift to me by a dear friend,” Gai says happily, swallowing half of his drink, face suspiciously red. “Beautiful, aren’t they?”

If Kakashi was a bit dense than Gai was oblivious and there were many bets about the eventuality of one of them making the first move.

She knew Ibiki had a sizable investment on Gai making the first move but also – they _were_ beautiful, he didn’t make cards for just anyone and there were clearly time and money invested in them.

 _Dear friend._ Well, it was no secret that ANBU Commanders worked with T &I and there were rumours about them having been on the same team so it wasn’t all that strange, if a bit surprising, and she felt her chest warm at the trust in the easy sharing as she sipped her drink, nearly choking and throwing Raidou a very dry look.

He flicks her a piece of lemon with a cheeky wink.

“I hear Izumo-san actually requested you.” Ebisu eventually circles back to the piece of gossip after Genma and Gai have both been forced out of their shirts and Blue has lost three rounds, allowing the levelling of the playfield and throwing her shorts and hoodie over her back along with a single flip-flop, the other dangling from her toe in challenge.

Raidou’s drink, more alcohol than anything else, quickly mellows out her mood as well and she accepts the refill with a languish stretch. “He did,” she admits, sliding a fine winter piece with the half-nude Kakashi wrapped up in silky red bowtie in the snow to the middle of the table. “I did nail my own with full-points.”

“You’re also familiar with Kumo,” Ebisu says with false lightness and she slants him a look, more than one pair playing mute as Kakashi thrown down a piece with a pale figure astride an enormous beast, arm spreads, lightning crackling from the sky.

“I’ve been,” she allows.

“This life or your second?” Ebisu challenges.

She gives him a feral grin, sliding down a card. “Who told you?”

“You ask that as if it isn’t one of the worst kept secrets among the jounin that there’s something between you and the Yondaime.”

He takes a smug sip of his drink when she inhales her in shock.

“Between me and the Yondaime?” she gets out as Gai calmly diverts Genma’s attempt at cheating with a kunai that thuds hard into the table an inch from his fingertips.

It’s barely acknowledged – cheating allowed as long as it isn’t found out - and Genma folds his hand with barely a grumble, shifting his chair and attention to her.

“Nothing untoward,” he assures her. “But it isn’t exactly normal for little kids to come and go from the office of the Hokage. Especially one whose mother was from Kumo, the other the unclaimed bastard brother of the Nara clan-head. I wouldn’t be surprised if most jounin doesn’t suspects at least _something._ ”

“You’re all so damn nosy,” she huffs, glancing towards Kakashi who merely raises a lazy eyebrow, giving a small shrug. “Both. More in my last than this one – took both my chunin and jounin exams on Kumo soil to kinda shove it into my relatives’ faces. Hard to tell if they even knew I existed though and I was a foul-mothed brat prone to brooding.” She shrugs, slanting a look at Raidou when he turns a high-count card.

“It’s hard to imagine,” Genma muses, sipping his drink. “But you were an eerie kid.”

“I was also twenty-eight at six,” she tells him dryly. “And several of those years before being sent back were spent in ANBU. I had to do some growing or I wouldn’t be here.”

“Not all growing in ANBU is good,” Gai says with an odd solemnness that makes them all pause and look to him.

“No,” she agrees quietly.

Raidou wins the pot, his eyes expectant on her, and she forgoes her sandal and drags her t-shirt over her head, leaving her in her bindings and underwear.

He gives her a flat look and she flicks her toe, knowing how much inconsistencies annoyed him and delighting in it.

“I’ve always wondered,” Raidou voices after Gai wins the next round and Kakashi strip off his hitai-ate, eye remaining closed. “I mean – it must have been bad for someone to actually go through the trouble and send you all the way back here.” She meets his eyes across the table. “It’s quite the gamble, is what I’m saying.”

“Raidou,” Genma warns but there’s curiosity in his eyes, too, because knowledge has always been on the need-to-know and most kept only between the Yondaime and those closest to him.

“You have permission to share,” Kakashi says quietly, shifting with a little shiver despite the heat turned up. “Not the details but-“ he shrugs, blinking as Ebisu throws a blanket at Gai who drops it onto his shoulders and-

And he’s young – isn’t he? The youngest in the room and yet–

They’re catching up to history – he’s not the child he’d been when she returned but a man in his mid-twenties, mantled to become the sensei of team 7 in less than two years. Gai sensei of his in just one.

Two of the people who would carry the burden of the Rookie Twelve, a generation of truly exceptional shinobi.

All of them dead in her time save for _one_.

ANBU Weasel stares at her hands, remembering the screams of her Kage when he realised what she’d done.

_“You have to change this.”_

“You don’t have to-“

“There was nothing left,” she hears herself saying, interrupting the speaker. “Everything – in the end there wasn’t even people, just the two of us and the man responsible.”

The strange emptiness – the starkness of the realization that it couldn’t be fixed, that they had failed, and finding will to live another day with the knowledge that even if they defeated Madara there would be nothing to come home to.

Nothing to rebuild.

 _“Tell me life is beautiful,”_ her Kage says bitterly. _“Tell me there’s beauty even in this.”_

“It was just… empty,” she says distantly, tensing when a hand settles on her shoulder and glancing up to meet Kakashi’s eye.

“It won’t come to that again,” he says with a surety she wants to believe.

“Yeah!” Genma slams a hand down onto the table, startling Ebisu into nearly spilling his drink. “Whatever happens – Konoha is stronger now and we have the Yondaime this time around so I’d like to see them try!” 

Eyes zeroed upon him and Kakashi slouches deeper into his chair with strange noise, the wood cracking suspiciously beneath Gai’s hand even as his grin grew strained.

“What do you mean we have the Yondaime _this time?_ ” Raidou asked with a muted sort of horror.

-

Genma climbs through her window that night, dropping into her bed with a brush of chakra that keeps her from knifing him as she goes from sleep to awareness in a single breath at five in the morning.

“He isn’t angry,” he tells her as he drops his sandals onto her floor, wiggling out of his shirt and pants until he’s in his underwear and she huffs before shoving the knife back into the secret compartment near the headboard. “Just needed time to think.”

He shuffles beneath her covers without as much as an invitation, backing up until his back is pressing against her front. “Spoon me?”

She laughs, a short soft thing as she opens her arms and curls around him, his hand finding hers and grabbing it tight with a squeeze as he folds their hands together and tucks them against his chest.

“I’m sorry I misspoke. I forgot – and it was a stupid mistake. It shouldn’t have happened.” He says after a long moment and she feels the tension that ripples briefly through his back until she hums.

“Don’t be too harsh on yourself,” she says with a touch of wryness, tucking her chin against his shoulder. They’re nearly the same height and her knees fold into the bend of his. “I don’t know who knows what anymore and it’s my life being spread around.”

“Doesn’t it ever get tiresome?” Genma asks as the tension slowly bleeds out of him, head sinking into the pillow. “Everyone is doing everything in their power to prevent your future from happening and you’re just – here. You’re what – forty now? Any other shinobi would be retired but your body hasn’t even reached its prime.”

She hums. “You think I should have switched profession?”

“You ever consider it?”

“Mm,” she admits. “I did briefly entertain just becoming a ramen chef.” She tells him. “But Ichiraku really holds the market what with the Red Hot Habanero and her family being frequent visitors. Wouldn’t have stood a chance.”

“I can’t picture you as cook.”

“That’s cause you’ve tasted my food.”

“You are a terrible cook,” he agrees with a snort. “Really terrible, actually. How you survive month long missions with those skills-“

She pinches him, hard, and he jerks in her arms and she squeezes him tight to keep him from doing something in response.

He subsides with a huff of breath and she smiles against his skin.

-

“Do you know why we really been saying those things about you?”

“Mm?”

“I know I’m supposed to be your shishou and all but we both know it’s all pretend,” he says, thumb stroking against the back of her hand. “And I can never give you back those years in ANBU and we can’t tell the world what you’ve done for Konoha without putting you in danger but they should at least know that you deserve their respect,” he says softly. “You lost everything for us.”

She presses her forehead against his back.

“Go back to sleep, Genma.”

-

Naruto yanks the door open, stumbles and crashes into the ground with too wide eyes and a loud drawn out noise that makes Blue press her face deeper into her pillow.

“Blue-nee!?” Naruto gasps, sounding close to a scandalized old woman as more small feet pelts to the sound, practically falling inside and over each other. “Who are you!?” Naruto demands, pointing and Genma slowly drags himself into a sitting position, Blue dropping into his lap, face burying closer into his belly with a mumble of protest.

“I’m her shishou,” he says, dragging a hand through his limp hair. “What are you brats doing here?”

 _“Shishou!?”_ Naruto squeaks. “I didn’t know having a shishou meant sharing a bed,” he gasps, rounding on Sasuke. “Ne, ne, Sasuke, does that mean your brother and Tsunade-baa-chan are-“ he covers his mouth, unable to finish it, eyes round.

“What?! No!” Sasuke denies immediately, eyes growing equally wide.

“I wouldn’t mind sharing with Kaka-san,” Sakura decides, looking unruffled between the two, bare foot and with one of Kakashi’s ninken at her hip. “Dogs sleep in piles, Pakkun says so.”

Genma makes a noise close to a wheeze.

“Oh, Genma-san!” Yoshino smiles at him as she peers inside. “Are you staying for lunch?”

“If it’s not too much, Yoshino-san,” he bows his head in greeting to the Nara matriarch.

“No trouble at all,” she assures him. “Blue, Shikamaru is spending the day with Tenten and Chouji – can you pick them up later today? There was talk about a sleepover.”

She reluctantly uncurls from Genma with a yawn. “Yeah.” She rubs at her face. “I need to head in and get myself a haircut anyway.” She focuses on the trio still in the doorway. “What are you all doing here anyway?” she asks as Genma brushes a hand through her braids, easily finding the charred strands with a thoughtful _hmmm_.

“Itachi-san has us doing errands,” Sakura says bluntly as Sasuke puffs up. “He said he’d teach us something cool if we could do it before noon.”

“He also said he’d buy us lunch!” Naruto says brightly, bouncing on his toes.

“It’s almost eleven so you should probably get going then,” Yoshino comments in clear amusement. “I believe you said you had something for Blue?”

They round on Sasuke who hurriedly shoves a hand into his satchel, pulling up a crinkled letter strapped around a jar that he quickly smoothed out and offered with an air of importance “To Blue D from Uchiha Itachi.”

Blue reaches back and rummages around until she finds the pouch and flicks a small roll of yen notes to them, quickly snatched by Naruto’s eager hands. “A treat each,” she says with a roll of her shoulders. “Tell Itacchin thank you from me?” Sasuke nods eagerly and Naruto and Sakura hurriedly drag him with and out of the room with a holler of goodbye and a crash and a long sigh from Shikaku before he appears around the corner.

“Genma,” he greets, scratching at the back of his neck, clad in loose robes, hair down. “You staying long enough for a game?”

“If you don’t mind me hanging around,” Genma agrees, straightening at the idea of playing against the Jounin-Commander, eagerness creeping through his body-language.

Blue flops back with a mumble of _morning people_.

-

Blue wiggles her toes into her straw-sandals, catching the apple Yoshino throws her and slipping it into the satchel at her waist beside Shikamaru’s jacket.

“Do you think you can pick up some snacks for them as well?” Yoshino asks as Bluestraightens out, patting down her pockets to make sure she had everything. “And a movie?”

“Sure,” Blue agrees easily. “Anything in particular?”

“Get them two so they have something to choose between,” Yoshino suggests after a brief thought. “I think Shikamaru mentioned something about Tenten being a big fan of female warriors so if you find something like that it would be golden.”

Blue tilts her head, meeting the other woman’s eyes in question when she lingers.

“I know we already spoke about you telling Shikamaru,” she begins hesitantly. “And I’m glad you patched things up. But he shouldn’t have heard anything in the first place. Especially not-“

“It’s okay,” Blue interrupts, stepping closer before she catches herself. “It’s the theme of the week, it seems but – Shikamaru is clever and while I wouldn’t have told him about… that… the fact that I’ve travelled as I have was kind of unavoidable.”

Yoshino breathes out. “He’s still young. Clever. But young all the same. Shikaku has already spoken to the Yondaime about it for it shouldn’t have been possible for a ten-year-old to overhear something like that.”

“You think there’s been a lapse of security.”  

Yoshino doesn’t deny it and Blue hums.

“I’ll be careful,” she promises and barely remembers to be hesitant as she angles her face and presses a kiss to the other woman’s cheek, the tips of her ears warming at the fond look it gains her before she bids a hurried goodbye.

-

Blue signs a contract for a small apartment that afternoon and it’s barely larger than her old ANBU place. The walls need to be painted and she has to give it another scrubbing before getting some furniture into it but it’ll be a good place to crash after long mission, she decides.

The living room and bedroom is their own room to the right after a small hallway, bathroom with a thick wooden door and then a small kitchen with place for a table for four if she stretches it.

The landlady is an old kunoichi on the recommendation of Gai who’d slipped a note into her pocket without her notice.

She made a mental note to get him something nice as she brushes her fingers over the small kitchen counter.

-

Finding a hairdresser capable of handling her hair in Konoha was a bit of trouble but eventually had her in the depth of the civilian distract on a recommendation from the Madame she employed for information with a promise to stop by the following week.

“What did you do, stick your head into a fire pit?” Shin asks as he sceptically pulls out a lump of burnt together hair.

He hadn’t even hesitated to bring her inside after catching sight of her hair, tugging her down in a kitchen chair as a younger girl in fine braids watched her silently with owl-like attention from where she was munching on the cake Blue has brought for a bit of bribery.

“No matter, I don’t wanna know,” he mutters. “You shinobi are all the same. Stay,” he says with careful emphasis. “I need fetch my tools.”  He disappeared with a mumble.

“Are you really a shinobi?" 

Blue slants her attention to the other, admiring the almost bluish tint to her dark skin and the clever brown eyes. “That I am. My name is Blue D.”

“Hina,” the girl returns promptly. “I’m gonna be a shinobi too.”

“That so?” Blue raises an eyebrow. “You old enough to join the academy?”

“Next year,” Hina says seriously. “I’ll be the first shinobi in my family.”

“So, what kind of shinobi do you want to be?” Blue asks, leaning her arms on the back of the chair she’s straddling and settling her chin upon them. “My best friend is an iriyo-nin while my shishou is more into the whole kenjutsu business.”

“I wouldn’t mind a sword,” Hina says, perking up. “What’s your spe-ci-ali-ty, Blue-san?” the girl spells out the word with care and Blue’s mouth twitches.

“This.” She spreads her hand up, a spark of lightning appearing, creeping between her fingers and doing a little vibrating curl in the palm of her hand where she extinguishes it with a press of her fingers just as Shin rounds the corner.

He eyes the wide-eyed child suspiciously. “Everything alright here?”

“Mmm.” Hina shoves more cake into her mouth and hunches around it and Shin gives Blue a long look that she returns with innocence and he huffs, dropping the box of tools before him.

“ _Shinobi_ ,” he mutters.

-

There isn’t much he can do to save it and they end up agreeing to crop the hair short around her head, leaving a fringe that he carefully folds into thin twists and presses down, leaving a fluffy sort of effect.

There is a smatter of bare spots at her neck where the heat had gone deep and that would likely scar but overall it wasn’t too bad, she admits, touching her bare neck where there’s a strange sort of emptiness as she stares into the hand-held mirror he’d pulled forth.

“You’re that Nara, aren’t you?” Shin asks after shooing a reluctant Hina out of the room. “My sister-in-law works with the Madame and she’s mentioned seeing a jounin with Kumo colours stopping by.” He lowers his voice as he speaks, something determined stealing over his expression for just a moment as she cranes her head back to consider him.

“Let’s say I am,” she allows. “What about it?”

“There’s been some trouble.” He folds his arms across his chest. “My sister-in-law refuses to speak about it but she’s been stressed lately and hasn’t visited for almost two months now. She keeps saying it’s alright but…” he gestures with clear frustration. “I want to help but I can’t exactly waltz in.”

“Your sister-in-law…”

“Hina’s mother, yes,” Shin quickly admits. “My brother – her father – is doing business in Suna and won’t be home for weeks yet.”

“I already promised Madame to stop by next week,” she hums. “I’ll take a look.”

“Thank you,” Shin breathes, bowing deep.

-

Shikamaru keeps glancing at her hair when she picks them up and he clearly wants to say something but she comes armed with three bags of snacks and three movies that quickly becomes a debate.

Blue watches in bemusement as her normally calm brother gets dragged into a heated debate of whether a mermaid knight would triumph over the pirate samurai captain with her red hair spilling dramatically in the wind and glances down at Chouji when the boy reaches for her hand.

“They’ve been like this the whole day,” he tells her, accepting the cookie she sneaks him. “Shika lost to her in shogi,” he admits, just loud enough that it leaves her blinking, wondering if she heard correctly.

She drops two more cookies into his waiting palm.

“He’s lost to Sakura before,” she points out.

“Yeah but that’s _Sakura,_ ” Choji says, as if it explains anything at all. “She’s smart,” he clarifies at her look. “Even Shikaku-oji-san says she’s smart and he doesn’t say that about just anyone,” he tells her with the solemnity of a child.

“Huh.” Blue blinks. “And Tenten isn’t?” she wonders, searching for a sense of logic.

“Well, she beat Shika,” Chouji finally answers when she gives him a long look and drops one last cookie into his hand. “But she isn’t top of the class smart. Just clever.”

“Ah,” Blue agrees dubiously.

-

Blue greets Izumo in full jounin uniform and to his credit he barely twitches as he accepts the ice cream she shoves into his hands.

“We’re going to be working as equals,” she says before he can get a word out. “We’re operating under the assumption that you’ve already passed your jounin tests with flying colours, as you will once I’m done with you.” She puts a hand on the bright red band around her upper arm. “I’m going to act as team leader this month and then you take the next as we level up from B-rank to A-rank.”

The surprise in his eyes drains into an anticipatory grin.

“I knew you were the right person,” he breathes out and he must be younger than she first anticipated because there’s _something_ in his eyes that she hesitates to name and Genma’s words from that morning comes creeping back at her.

_“Everyone knows that Kotetsu and Izumo are a pair and I can’t imagine just anything getting between them. Keep an eye on it, alright? I’ll do a bit of digging on my own.”_

Well, there isn’t much she can do about it at the moment and as long as it doesn’t interfere with their mission it’s just going to have to be.

“Tell me, have you ever infiltrated a brothel?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fall has been a mess, apologizes to this very slow update.
> 
> I love writing Blue D and it was nice to get back to it. It was also interesting to sorta bounce her with, essentially, her colleagues who are both older and younger than her and weigh that against what they know. 
> 
> Genma and Gai and Kakashi are obviously mostly in the know - Raidou knew little but not much. And then there's Ebisu who were on the same genin team as Gai and Ibiki and clearly picked up _something_ , drew his conclusions, and confronted her among friends of them both to press and accept boundaries as it works among nosy shinobi.
> 
> I had far too fun writing that, Hanafuda is a legit game and Ibiki is (secretly) the highly sought after maker of the best cards in Konoha. He also has a soft spot for Gai that he refuses to admit to.
> 
> But yeah, his own death wasn't exactly something the Yondaime would be spreading around and Bear was the ANBU Commander before Gai and the one still keeping that secret alongside Gorilla and important people like Kushina, Jiraiya and Tsunade. Genma just sorta got saddled with more than he thinks he did when she was entrusted to him because he was essentially evaluating her state of mind and so on. It's in the margins of things (he was her ANBU contact the first time around for this exact reason).
> 
> Blue is still a bit embarrassed and unsure what to do with Yoshino and Shikaku and I love writing them together.
> 
> Naruto is ten going on eleven in this chapter (which makes Blue eighteen going on nineteen). 
> 
> The chunin exam is getting ever closer.
> 
> Fall has been... _something_... and know that I do reread your comments a lot even though I know I'm horribly bad at responding.
> 
> That said it's 6 a.m. and I'm going to sleep and then drink a lot of coffee.
> 
> Cheers!


	10. What Is And Was

Blue rolls the dango stick absently in her mouth, bouncing it with her corner teeth rhythmically pushing down.

“I can’t say I appreciated it but the kid is quite something,” Anko says beside her, three sticks branded between her fingers like claws. “Took a while to make her shut up about Hatake but she’ll learn to find her own style eventually, given a bit of pressure.”

“Did you take care of the academy as well?” she asks distractedly, intent on Izumo as he moves through the field with the large knife he’d summoned in a flourish of movement.

“You mean that joke of a kunoichi class? Nai-chan was _furious_ and is currently playing teacher while they’re trying to figure out a more permanent solution. Ibiki has spent a lot of time trying to figure out who has been deliberately screwing with future kunoichis. Gave us a lot of work, you did,” Anko says with appreciation.

Blue makes a noise in acknowledgement, straightening as Izumo once again swings too wide.

“Something is off."

Anko raises a brow, mouth crammed with dango and looks to Izumo as she chews.

“Well, yeah,” she agrees through a mouthful. “Kotetsu isn’t here.” She snorts at Blue’s blank look, swallowing. “You wouldn’t notice because you’re doing that whole lone-wolf shtick like Hatake but look at how he moves." She gestures pointedly with a stick. “He’s constantly anticipating someone who isn’t there and it’s leaving him wide-open.”

Blue stares. “Huh.”

“Good luck training him out of that,” Anko comments, reaching for more dango. “Because if you don’t they’re going to cream him.”

-

Shikamaru gently strokes a hand down her head, over the new twists, eyes intent.

Blue is sprawled out on her stomach on the plank, half-asleep from the petting, Shikamaru having claimed a seat on her back. Beside them Yoshino and Shikaku are playing a game of Hanafuda, both wearing loose robes over simple clothing, hair still damp and towels around their necks.

It’s a warm evening, deer grazing close to them, cicadas sounding in the distance.

“How’s the training with Izumo-san going?” Yoshino asks, placing a card with a deer with wood-like horns clad in cherry blossoms.

“Could be better,” Blue admits, tilting her head into her little brother’s touch. “I found a problem and now I got to solve it.”

“You want an ear?” Shikaku offers.

“Maybe.” Blue cracks an eye open. “If I haven’t figured it out by the end of the month.”

Shikaku hums his agreement.

“If Izumo is taking the jounin exam in Kumo does that mean you’re going too?” Shikamaru asks, tugging at one of the twists.

“Mm.”

“Does that mean you’re going to see your family?”

Blue stills beneath and reaches back to grab a thigh, doing a twist to get on her back below him, leaving him seated on her stomach, eyes intent on her own.

“Why would you ask that?” she asks curiously. “I certainly haven’t sought them since I got back and that’s nearly twelve years of no-contact.”

“But you _do_ have family there,” Shikamaru pushes and she blinks at him.

“Sure,” she agrees. “My mother was the third cousin of the current Raikage so there’s certainly people with my blood hanging around Kumo. They were close enough that he allowed me to be named after his cousin Blue B.” His brow creases. “But it ended badly between them and, by extension, me.”

“Is that why you are in Konoha? And not Kumo?”

“My father was from Konoha,” she hums. “My parents – they were caught spying on the Raikage and consequently executed for it. The Raikage decided to spare me and I was brought to Konoha.”

He didn’t need to show her mercy, and he certainly didn’t need to have her brought to Konoha, but he had and it had spared her the fate of growing up a traitor’s daughter.

Her father had been a no-name shinobi who had been erased from Konoha documents without as much as a raised eyebrow, her birth-certificate replaced with _Nara Shiga_ in the place of her father’s name between one breath and the next, his history as a first-generation shinobi gone.

It was a clever move by the Yondaime – it gave Konoha a much bigger claim on her then it otherwise would have had and, considering her knowledge, it was a risky thing to have her fall into the wrong hands by something like politics.

Of course, it was a dicey move to put her to close to the future clan head while claiming her the daughter of the current one’s brother, theoretically putting her next in line after him – and that was before Shikamaru's birth. For almost a year she’d been next in line to the Nara clan – her father claimed by the clan post-death to assure her place.

All in the interest in Konoha’s future.

Shikamaru’s frown gets deeper. “They were executed? How old were you?”

“Yes. Four. I don’t really remember them so no need for that frown.” She pushes her finger against his brow until it grudgingly smooths beneath her touch.

A strange look fills his eyes. “But if you were sent back in time – couldn’t you have prevented them from dying as well? Why didn’t your Kage send you back even further?”

Blue registers the fact that Yoshino and Shikaku had gone strangely silent beside them in an absent sort of way as she stares up at her little brother.

And that is what he is, isn’t he? For all that life had brought them together in a strange way he was family – the first one to truly register as such since her parent’s death in another life entirely.

Parents whose faces she didn’t even remember.

“He didn’t know,” she admits honestly. “He didn’t even know my name. It wouldn’t have occurred to him to ask and in the grand picture it didn’t matter.”

The truth of the matter was that she hadn’t known he even could send her back until it happened.

“Why didn’t he know?” Shikamaru presses. “You said you were together for a long time.”

“Because he didn’t need me to be Blue D, he needed ANBU Weasel – the last remaining link to the Konoha he had lost.”

He goes silent at that, visibly mulling over her words and she patiently waits him out.

“I’m glad you’re my sister,” he says finally. “I’m sorry you couldn’t save your parents. But I’m glad we got you.”

Beside them Yoshino let’s makes a noise suspiciously akin to a sniffle.

“I’m glad as well, Shika-bo,” Blue says gently. “I couldn’t have asked for a better family.”

“And if your family in Kumo wants your back then you’ll tell them that you have a better family here, won’t you?”

She laughs, tugging him down against her to a grumble. “I’ll be sure to tell them,” she whispers into his ear.

-

The following morning Shikamaru asks her to braid his hair and she does to, fingers working nimbly as he patiently sits still between her thighs.

“According to Nara history we were originally from Kumo,” he tells her, fingers working to fold an origami star, barely glancing at it as his fingers work by memory alone. “Maybe we’re really distant relatives.”

“It’s not impossible,” she admits. “We all derived from something so in a way we’re all related.”

Shikamaru wrinkles his nose. “Don’t make it weird.”

His hair isn’t really made for the tight braids she’d favoured. Instead she sections off the hair in the middle, braids it into a thick tight braid and then weaves thinner twin braids on the side of it and sectioning them together at the back of his head, pulling them together and securing it into a bun with a thin leather strap.

“Give it a shake.”

He turns to give her a sceptical look, “Shake?”

“You’re a shinobi,” she reminds him. “I can’t send you out with something that won’t last and your hair is a bit different from my own.”

He leans forward and gives it a good shake and Blue gives it a prodding after, checking for eventual weaknesses, and he bears it with fading patience.

“Can I go now, Blue- _obasan_? I promised to meet up with Tenten before class.”

She hums, finally releasing his head and his hands immediately darts up to gingerly explore what she’d done. “Want me to pick you up after?”

“I’m heading to Naruto’s place after,” he admits as she fishes for one of the small handheld mirrors and flips it open. “We’re doing a group project together. Sakura and Sasuke are joining too.” He tilts his head and she watches the way his shoulders subtly straightens with content amusement as he admires himself.

Shikamaru had always been a small copy of his father, subtly picking up on her sense of clothing, as children often did according to Yoshino, in an attempt to find what suited them. But the braiding she’d done was nothing like hers but something wholly his own and it had clearly caught him off-guard.

Genius he might be but different from Itachi who had a very strong sense of self – Shikamaru watches and admires and he picks what he likes but there’s a lack of self-identity because of the pressure of living up to his father's name that he’ll need to work on to avoid becoming bits and pieces of others.

“You look good,” she tells him, just to watch the tip of his ears go red, mouth twitching as he grumbles. “I’ll pick you up at Naruto’s after dinner.”

-

She visits Itachi in the hospital before lunch – dropping through his window and startling a half-asleep Shisui as she drops down on the desk with a deliberately hard _clack,_ turning her head to avoid the kunai that thunks into the wall.

Itachi looks up from the paper he’d been writing on to stare at her toes, painted bright orange from an enthusiastic Naruto just nights earlier.

“Blue,” he greets as she crouches down before him and then he pauses and his eyes furrows as his gaze settles on her head. “You changed your hair.”

“You and Kakashi are equally bad at using doors,” Shisui informs her, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “No common decency in your souls.”

Blue allows Itachi to pull her down, a gentle hand stroking over her hair as Shisui steps closer, angling to study his cousin’s path with a raised brow and a small, _huh._ “Your hair must have been more burnt than I thought,” he says after a moment, a complicated feeling flittering briefly through his eyes. “Must be strange – you’ve always done your hair in those braids of yours despite the time they took.”

“It’s a good way to keep curly hair like mine,” she says, gentle pulling back from Itachi. “Twists are good too and Shin did good work considering how bad it was.”

“Shin?”

“Mm. His sister-in-law is involved with something down at one of the brothels. We’re trading favour for favour.”

In truth the Madame had directed her to Shin who had helped with her hair, yes, but also circled back to something that benefited the two of them. She could have outright asked and Blue would have said yes because it was the sort of trade-system they worked within but that would have put the Madame in a place of owing it to her.

Opportunity presented itself and thus.

It was all politics.

Shisui folds his arms. “You bringing Izumo with you? It’s unofficial work.”

“I’ll pay him. Unofficially.” Blue shoots him a look. “Don’t go telling on me. He needs to learn how to trade favours.”

“Shisui is really bad at networking,” Itachi informs her point-blank, leaning back. “His problem is that he keeps doing good things for people without expecting anything back, according to Tou-san.”

Shisui winces. “You say that as if it’s a bad thing,” he pouts.

Itachi gives her a considering look. “You should bring him with you.”

They stare at him.

“She should what now?” Shisui asks faintly. “Because I’m pretty sure you just said-“

“You would have made a good ANBU member,” Itachi says frankly and Blue understands suddenly what he’s getting at, their eyes meeting, and she knows that she can’t deny him this – not when he asks so little of her.

“Alright,” she says before Shisui can open his mouth to respond. “Jounin often work in teams of three and I could use a second opinion on a matter. It works out.”

Shisui gives her a downright startled look at her easy acquaintance and behind him Itachi gives her a brief relived smile.

-

Itachi did have a point and he was her friend – her _best friend_.

It’s a novelty. She relishes it. She loves him.

Blue admits to herself that she has a soft spot for him. It’s the only reason she says yes because she’s neither close nor does she care for Shisui in more than a you-mean-the-world-to-my-best-friend kind of way.

Their relationship had always been strained.

He was far more socially adept that Itachi and nearly as clever which meant that he’d climbed the ranks quickly and had himself printed in the Bingo Books as an S-Rank threat. But without ANBU he’d never been pushed down a path of brutality, consequently not-gentler, per say, but considering her work and what she did-

Shisui had picked up on the off-ness about her and he had reacted to it when he was young and it had stuck. Added with what she did, her pragmatism and often cold-blooded way of handling matters, they never really agreed on things.

Itachi understood necessity (it was what had allowed him to do what he did in her world).

Shisui understood necessity but opposed it.

His kindness wasn’t a bad trait. Her Kage had been a good man, kind to a fault, if a bit dense in emotional matters, self-absorbed in others. In many ways Shisui reminded her of her Kage who had disagreed, loudly, with what she did and was.

And then in many ways he was his direct opposite.

-

The thing is that ANBU Weasel had always been on her own, that was the way it was until her Kage. And then she had been sent back and she had fallen into old patterns and paths and it had nearly gotten her killed because something had fundamentally changed during the years without her realising it.

ANBU Weasel wouldn’t have spent the morning having a proper breakfast, braided her brother’s hair or made plans to pick him up. ANBU Weasel wouldn’t have been assigned Izumo in the first place because she was _ANBU_ , a _child murderer_ , someone even the worst of the worst did their level best to stay away from.

And now here she was, willingly taking on the responsibility of two people because she had a soft-spot a mile wide for the first friend she’d ever made.

-

Blue blows out a breath, really feeling her forty years as she stares down at the village below her, something strange bubbling inside her chest the longer she looks at the small lights in the distant, people moving like small ants in and anthill and-

She’s sitting on the head of the Yondaime, the place her Kage had often nostalgically reminisced about, describing the village in minute detail from its remembered perch – as if to remind them both of what they were struggling for.

_“- Iruka-sensei would always bring me down the road that took us outside the Hokage Tower whenever he would treat me to Ichiraku’s. It was always busy. Civilians in kimonos melting together with shinobi, passing each other by, knowing they were safe under the watching eye of the Hokage. You remember – do you remember how there would be lanterns all down the street as soon as it started getting dark? These red ones. They would be everywhere, casting their glow upon the people of Konoha-“_

_“- there was this place I used to visit as a child-“_

_“-I used to trick ANBU like you, you know? No one could catch me! I wanted everyone to look at me, truly look at me, and see Uzumaki Naruto! Not the Kyuubi. I didn’t know then, of course, not until –“_

_“- there was this woman near the northern civilian distract who would always sneak me an extra apple and I used to imagine I’d grow up to be just like her-“_

_“-I used to resent Kakashi-sensei, you know? I was such a child but I really wanted his attention. I didn’t understand why he focused so much on Sasuke, not until he left and then he died and-“_

_“-I don’t think I ever had a crush on Sakura ya know? I just wanted her to like me. She was the most popular girl in the class. So smart. Imagine having someone so smart looking at you and saying you mean something – that’s what I wanted-“_

_“- my parents, they gave up everything for Konoha but sometimes, you know? Sometimes I wish they had chosen me-“_

_“- I didn’t understand-“_

“There you are.” Blue doesn’t startle easily but the twitch of her shoulders gives her away to the green eyes of the woman considering her from the neighbouring head of the Sandaime. “There was a bit of a situation with Sakura’s mother so the kids headed home early. Kashi-chan and Minato are handling it but Shika-chan got worried when he realized you weren’t there and Naru-chan insisted I’d come find you, _dattebane_.”

Kushina was probably the best sensors inside the walls of Konoha and there really was nothing funny about her being sent to track Blue down because of her son’s pushy nature and yet-

Her Kage had never known his parents. He had never known unconditional love and the scraps of pieces he’d scrambled together and made his own had turned to ash and dust in barely a year of making his dream and he was left with _her_.

Her Kage would have done anything to know that his mother would search the entire village for an errant ANBU on his word alone and it’s _funny._ Because it’s the kind of person he _was_ and it is the kind of person he _is_ and she’s just-

“Can I sit with you?”

Blue gestures beside her and Kushina lands silently, settling down and brushing long red hair from her face as they catch in the wind, tucking it behind a round ear.

“He used to talk about Konoha,” she finds herself saying, eyes trailing down rooftops, the dangling red lanterns in the merchant districts, roads that weaved and stretched from the tower in the very center of it all, the heart of the village. “Stories, memories, simple observations made of everyday people.”

Kushina follows her gaze as Blue draws a knee to her chest, resting her arms upon it and then her chin.

“He spoke fondly about the Ichiraku owners in particular. The man and his daughter. They would treat him for free ramen when he had little and they were among the first to show him kindness outside Sandaime-sama.” Simple civilians and yet – kind. “I think he viewed it as a source of comfort – more home than his empty apartment ever was.”

It feels strange to talk about him.

Everything around her was orchestrated for change, a desperation to bring them off the path that had led to the destruction of the world. They would never know the person who had given up everything for them in a a last desperate gamble to bring her back because he’d died for her to live.

But he had been real and for three years he had been her entire life.

She’s realising she understands him better, now, than she ever had when it was just the two of them.

“Have you ever been there?” Kushina asks, something strange in her voice that makes Blue angle her head towards her. “At Ichiraku. I can’t recall Naruto ever mentioning you bringing him.”

“I… have not,” Blue says, brow dipping.

“You should,” Kushina says, stretching out a hand, watching Konoha through her fingers, and Blue notes fondly that her nails are as orange as her toes. “I think he would have liked you to.”

Blue remembers her Kage as he had been in the end.

Tired, worn-out, so young and yet. Age had been carved into his flesh in harsh lines, ribs straining against his skin, angles too sharp, his hair shaggy and washed out, hanging into those blue eyes of his but then – when he turned towards her, a smile blossoming despite everything, eyes crinkling at the corner…

He’d been the most beautiful thing in the world.

She wonders what he would have said if he could see her now – on the head of his father, his mother beside her, nails painted in matching colours courtesy of his younger self. Wonders if he would be happy for her – even proud.

“We should probably head back.” Kushina rises in a single smooth move, her hand angling down, palm open. “Would you do me the honour of escorting me home to assure my son you’re as safe as can be?” Despite her words there’s an open fondness on her face that Blue understands and echoes.

When she had first met Kushina she had been stuck by how much her son looked like her. The eyes, the shape of their faces, the way emotions displayed so openly and clearly, drawing in those around them.

It wasn’t as startling now. She’d been given years to separate mother from son, father from son… Naruto from her Kage.

But looking at her like this – her red hair spilling around her, off-set against the life of the village below them, arms muscular, dressed simple in a green dress over a sleeveless white blouse – there’s beauty in this, in seeing her alive when in her world she hadn’t made it past twenty-four, dead on the day of her son’s birth. Her own person and not just a faceless name on her Kage’s lips.

She’s in her mid-thirties now, laugh lines around her mouth, crowfeet at the corner of her eyes and Blue slips her hand into hers – allows herself to be pulled up, grip shifting and a warm arm linking into hers.

They start to walk down the side of the mountain, soon sliding between steps as Kushina matches the chakra levels in Blue’s feet with a cheeky wink and a tug.

Because they’re kunoichi and they might not look like it but only five years separate them, bound together in their love for a boy and the man he had been.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter got a lot more introspective than I meant because Blue needed to sort through some thoughts, apparently, and I've been itching to write Kushina because I enjoy the fact that they're close in age - because of the time travel stuff - and I imagine that they could have been good friends in a life where things had been different and Blue had been born a generation earlier/Kushina a generation later. 
> 
> It's kinda what I enjoy about this pairing as well and why I'm writing it (I generally don't do a lot of romance - at least not as a focus). Pein and Konan are - at this point - 31. Blue is 18 but also 40. It's a very interesting state to explore.
> 
> She's also from a world where their actions had direct consequences and impact on her and those around her - people who were very much real to _her_. But now she's in a reality where her changes directly impact _their_ actions and she's also actively helping them.
> 
> This is a funky state to exist in, naturally, and there's so much I want to get at but I enjoy this slow exploration and I'm trying to nuance a lot how she's handling (and not handling) things as we go along.
> 
> Blue graduated early, killed at eleven, made ANBU at fourteen and was set on a path of specialized assassinations that ostracized her from those that should have been her peers. Her entire life has been for her village and how she handles things - especially emotions - reflects that.
> 
> Anyway, update! Next chapter we get some actual Izumo content and Shisui because Itachi stuck his fingers in things and it's gonna be a ride. 
> 
> Got any questions, thoughts, opinions, anything really? Comments are free for all and I do my best to answer when I have the time between juggling too many things! 
> 
> Now it's Friday morning and I'm gonna dress up in my warmest jacket and extra socks to take my dog for a long walk in the snow.
> 
> Cheers!


	11. Problems and Solutions

Blue grows up in war times, moving quickly through the ranks, fast-slotted for ANBU with her second kill and given little time to question it, orphaned and encouraged to focus her anger outside the walls of Konhagakure.

She ranks chunin and finally jounin at fourteen before ANBU swallows her up and there another form of discipline teaches her to look past her own emotions, to focus on the good of the village above anything else.

 _“Keep him safe,”_ Haruno tells her and for three years she knows little else.

 _“You have to change this,”_ her Kage begs her before he upheaves her entire life and sets her on a very different path.

Change and adapt, ANBU Weasel is a creature of necessity and she does her best with what she has.

-

“You both have a very strange ideas of brothel workers,” Blue decides about two days after Itachi had shoved his cousin upon her, making for a gathering of three in the small clearing she had claimed for them.

She’s perched on a rock, nursing a lukewarm cider and watching the two with mild amusement.

“You’re not going to be entertaining clients,” she tells them. “And you’re not expected to seduce the brothel workers so tone down the sultriness.”

If they _were_ to entertain clients, even in something as a tea ceremony, Shisui was the one she would put her bets on. The Uchiha clan demanded a certain decorum when entertaining guests and for all that he was larger-than-life in the shinobi business he knew how to lower his head and keep quiet.

Mostly.

“And rework your henges,” she tacks on because _really._

Izumo releases his henge with a poof, dragging a hand through his hair. “I don’t understand why we have to do this,” he says with frustration. “How is this going to help me pass the jounin exam?”

“Infiltration,” Shisui says with a little stretch as he releases his own. “It’s not uncommon in the jounin exam, although it varies. Mine was pretty straight forward but I also took it in Kiri.”

Blue glances at him in mild surprise. Kiri didn’t allow many exams and Konoha tended to be wary about sending anything bloodline related past its borders considering the purges that had been happening there courtesy of the Mizukage.

“But why brothel workers?” Izumo asks with a flick of contemplative eyes towards the Uchiha.

“Because I’m trading favour for a favour and you’re stuck with me,” Blue admits easily. “You’ll be meeting many potential good sources for information because brothel workers come in contact with a wide-variety of people and many of them drugged up or drunk – loose tongued among pretty civilian faces.”

“Networking,” Shisui mutters.

Blue inclines her head. “In this instance I am allowing you to make use of my network to, potentially, lay the ground for your own. I have a good working relationship with the Madame and a handful of her workers so I’m sure you’re going to act with proper decorum.” It’s a mild admonishment but it makes Izumo straightens up and Shisui breathes out.

“Can you show us?”

Blue hums, considering him, and then folds her hand in a sign, allowing the henge to settle over her with a languish roll of her shoulders. Allows body langue to become loose, relaxed, a small up-tip of the corner to hint at a sense of humour and good time.

She chooses a blue yukata with green birds that curl into flight over the fabric, something to soften and distract, cinched at the waist but open just enough at the chest to hint at what could be revealed if one took the time to push the fabric that hung precariously near the shoulders.

Shisui stares at the copy of himself – at the curls lengthened into a playful mess that drooped down into dark eyes but otherwise unchanged and yet, completely different, body-language shifted in a way that is subtle and yet startling.

Flushes at the way she tangles her fingers into his hair, eyes dark and inviting.

“Just because it’s a female dominated field, doesn’t mean that male brothel workers doesn’t exist,” Blue murmurs, lowering Shisui’s voice into something smooth and rolling. “If you struggle taking female form then go for something familiar.” 

“This is so disturbing,” Shisui mutters, impressed despite himself as he gives his copy a critical once-over, circling to get all the good angles as Blue tilts her head back, eyes lidded. “Did you take one of those seduction classes?”

“I did,” Blue lies, because she’d run through the ANBU version of it in her world, it just wasn’t on any papers. “I’m sure Genma would be absolutely _delighted_ if you stopped by.”

Shisui winces. “Please don’t to that thing with my voice,” he begs and Blue curls his mouth into a grin with too many teeth before letting the henge slip off her with a _poof._

“Genma runs seduction classes?” Izumo asked with a raised eyebrow. “ _Shiranui_ Genma?”

“It’s pretty well-known among the jounin,” Shisui admits absently. “We’re a gossipy bunch.”

Blue studies the way Izumo’s knuckles tightens briefly, something flashing through his eyes before he catches himself and she raises her cider to her lips with a thoughtful little _hm_ as he fixates on her with steely determination.

“Do me too,” he demands of her.

-

And if Shisui tugs contemplatively at his short curls that night in front of the mirror, that’s nobody’s business but his own.

-

While trying to suss out what in the world was bothering her new partner and giving him and Shisui a crash course in the art of infiltration and networking Blue finds herself spending a lot of time thinking about the system in place in Konoha while staring down at the notebook Pein had sent with her.

It had a seal on the back of it – meant to be activated in a bastardized version of a reverse summon, which, _clever_ , she really wanted to get her hands on whoever had made it and nab a portable one or two for herself if possible.

Genin, chunin, jounin, tokubetsu jounin, Hunter-nin, ANBU and iryo-nin.

Genin commander, chunin commander, jounin commander, ANBU commander…

She’s far more informed on certain topics above others, naturally. ANBU was her specialisation and despite her own iffy genin days both times around she had a good understanding of the learning curve courtesy of the gaggle of kids that she occasionally helped out with homework and who tended to speak lengthily of their days at given chance.

Her best friend was Itachi which meant that she had a good grasp of the medical field, she had an informed in on the jounin commander himself and she had basically been her own ANBU commander…

She was pretty much useless in regards to anything related to the chunin division since she’d been fast-tracked for ANBU the first time around and hadn’t even really been chunin even when she was chunin in this world but it’s a gap of knowledge she can fill-in with her new partner without raising much suspicion.

There are some information she naturally won’t share but that’s a given considering just what was being requested but it’s still daunting, compromising and essentially sending in-depth information to a village that wasn’t Konoha.

Once she sends it off she knows there’ll be no turning back, no explanations or excuses that can get her out of it if it’s ever discovered just what she’d done.

Already it’s filled to the middle pages in scrawls of long black information, boxes marked out with her own suggestions and thoughts about their implication and purpose, and she leans her head back against the wall of the house and looks out over the porch and the stretch of forest, at the grazing deer, listening to the echoing noise of the cicadas.

 _“He was strange, Pein – but I think I admired him, just a bit,”_ her Kage tells her one evening. _“We had the same dream and he betted a better world on me, sacrificing everything and bringing Konoha back to life.”_

Blue remembers coming back to life, crawling out from dust and dirt in the devastation – had personally unearthed more than one body that hadn’t been as lucky as her, revived crushed and buried alive to a second death.

Hadn’t mentioned that part to her Kage, caught by the soft curl of his smile.

_“You have to change this.”_

Blue has enough self-awareness to recognise that there’s something that has fundamentally changed inside of her with the narrative of this world. It’s written in the nagged raw wound on her back where hesitation had cost her, in her love for Shikamaru that makes something in her heart _ache_ when he looks at her with devastated eyes, and it’s the part of her that something to lose in following her Kage’s orders.

_“You have to change this.”_

Blue closes her eyes.

-

When all is said and done Blue has to practically elbow Shisui into not waving potential networks away and Izumo is making a passable good effort at the table he was occupying even if any veteran brother worker would peg him in two seconds flat.

She’s paired them off systematically in practice matches with a bag of rocks to throw whenever her current partner left himself wide open to anticipate someone who was very much not there and he was turning out to be a slow learner, tired and frustrated with himself when one of her rocks him.

“Don’t beat yourself up,” Shisui says with a stretch of his back near the end of the one month mark. “Habits are hard to break.”

She’d hit him as well with more than one rock when his eyes had flashed sharingan red and his brief glance at her makes her quirk an eyebrow.

Uchiha’s and Hyuugas were both notoriously quick to fall back and rely on their eyes and it was one of the things that Itachi had a firm grasp of _not in her vicinity._ It was perfectly alright on missions but it strained their vision and was supposed to be an ace, not the first thing they activated.

Itachi had been practically blind in the end, she knows, because her Kage had known.

She hadn’t quite understood the connection between her worlds Itachi and her Kage but there had been _something_ there in the shared loss of Uchiha Sasuke.

Her Kage had been the one to finally bring an end to his suicidal last-ditch revenge against a village he had loved to pay for the loss of a little brother he had loved even more.

Itachi claimed he had a handle of things and she’s inclined to trust him but _still._

It is a bad habit.

Eyes were  easy enough to blind – flash tags could trip up most kekkei genkai that relied on eye use, Rinnegan being the only one she knew _didn’t_ and it was a clear anomaly in so many ways that she didn’t know to even know where to start.

The rocks had been Naruto’s ide, cheeky brat that he was.

“I haven’t worked with him in _weeks,_ ” Izumo says with clear frustration.

“Why is that anyway?” Shisui asks, folding his arms as he looks at the other man. “You and Kotetsu are like _this_ ,” he crosses his fingers together, “but now suddenly you’re splitting up and you’re off to Kumo to become a jounin.”

Blue feels mildly discomfited at the clear _anguish_ in the other’s eyes, rather like she was intruding, really, but not quite willing to draw attention to herself by moving for Izumo had clearly been inching up to this.

Shisui was far more empathetic and she was inclined to leave the handling of this particular issue to him.

“Because we _fucked up._ ”

The words are raw, self-loathing clear.

“We’ve always worked together,” Izumo says, spreading his hands out, something manic in the wretchedness of his tone. “So when we got split up we were both _useless_ and because of us Hayate had his lower body _crushed_ saving _my_ life!”

 _Hayate Gekko?_ Blue wonders, making a note to check in with Itachi before heading off to Kumo.

Shisui was clearly more aware of the issue, didn’t even look surprised, and she _knew_ she hadn’t been imagining that whiff of Genma’s scent on him. 

Finds herself wondering if there’d been more to Itachi’s request in having her bring Shisui along and even the Yondaime's decision to stick Izumo with her as she watches the way he trembles.

Itachi would definitely be briefed on the situation as the highest ranked medic-nin under Tsunade-sama herself and he’d changed a lot from the small genius she’d met some ten years ago what with his position demanding a certain touch of emotional intelligence that certainly had never been requested from _her_.

Blue wonders, mildly horrified, if she is more emotionally dense at _forty_ than her genius friend was at _seventeen._

“I need to make jounin,” Izumo breathes out. “I will never let anything like that happen again. I won’t allow it.”

Recognising her own disconnection from the on-goings she suspects Itachi and Genma probably made a good call in bringing Shisui in and Blue remains carefully still on the rock, her breathing slowed to a barely visible expand of her chest as she takes her time, counting absently at the back of her mind.

Accidents happened all the time – it was how the world of shinobi worked. A simple slip could mean a death sentence and the smallest advantage victory in close-call interactions.

Hayate had made a choice in stepping in and Izumo had lived because of it – that was admirable, expected even, in their work. As ANBU her life came second to duty and there’d never been _guilt_ associated to the loss of her Kage because he’d made a rational decision, working what advantage he had in sending her back, fulfilling his duty as the Kage he was.

Mourned and missed, names honoured on a stone that Kakashi religiously visited once a year for a dead teammate that wasn’t really dead.

She feels a lot of things in regards to her Kage but guilt about her survival and his death isn’t one of them.

-

Blue sends the notebook off and stops by Itachi’s office with a curious blue fruit she’d found at the market. They share it over some tea that Blue keeps in her hands without drinking, simply enjoying the warmth.

It brings her mind to Pein – the only one she’d met who made a good cup, enjoyable even. She might have been inclined to try and cajole him out of the recipe if she didn’t think Itachi might take her sudden interest in tea as a challenge to have her try even more new ones.

The one in her hand was a spicy mix that smelt rather like paprika but tasted like bitter water and burnt almonds.

“I heard you had a busy time,” Itachi comments as he takes a small sip of his own, looking perfectly content with the blend he’d carefully steeped for them. “I understand Shisui rather enjoyed it.”

She takes another chunk of the fruit which tastes strangely like someone had mixed salt and cucumber together, humming.

“Tou-san wasn’t terribly impressed to hear he infiltrated a brothel but kaa-san demanded all the details.” That did sound like Mikoto – Blue wasn’t entirely sure what the woman had been before marriage and children but she was betting the hunter-nin division considering she carried no public ranked records.

ANBU was another possibility but Blue prided herself with picking out her fellow shinobi and Mikoto didn’t quite have the tells for it.

Didn’t have to mean anything but she was inclined to go with her gut feeling.

“He picked it up quickly but he’ll never lay a good information network,” she admits. “At least not in the civilian populace – he’s rather popular in the shinobi ranks, however, and I think he took Izumo out for drinks after our training yesterday.” Which was just another form of networking, really.

It’s very telling as to just how much effort the Yondaime had put into integrating the Uchiha clan back into Konoha, she thinks. The way Itachi and Shisui both interact with their fellow shinobi but especially in the way Sasuke tumbles together with the other children, very different from the stoic admiration that her Kage had spoken of with a complicated mix of feelings.

He’s a good Hokage and Konoha is lucky to have him.

Itachi takes a slow sip and Blue is rather amused by how clearly pleased he is by her words.

Itachi, she knows, is the sort of person that can’t help but worry even if he doesn’t always voice it but it’s written all over his actions, sometimes quiet, sometimes louder, always with care.

“You’re leaving for Kumo tomorrow.” Itachi picks the last bit of fruit, splitting it in half, putting one back and giving the plate a gentle push towards her side of the table.

Blue briefly entertains the notion of asking him about just why he’d requested her to take on Shisui at the time he had but since she can’t figure out a way to voice it without sounding mildly paranoid she decides to leave it be.

“Want me to pick up something?” she asks instead.

 _Off the record,_ remains unvoiced as he inclines his head.

-

Shikamaru demands a spar before her leaving and she’s fond to catch the braid in his hair – a little clumsy, still, but with repeat it would become muscle memory.

She touches the back of her bare neck a bit self-consciously but there’d really been nothing to do about it and lingering on it was pointless.

“Itachi-san has been teaching Sasuke a new jutsu,” Shikamaru informs her as he stretches out and Blue hums in vague acknowledgement, his request blaringly clear but ignored to a small telling twitch of his index finger as he bent down with a curve of his back, grasping at the insides of his calves, arms crossed. “And Kakashi-san allowed Sakura to sign his summoning contract,” he adds airily.

“Is that so?”

“He’s been teaching Naruto this bunshin technique, too.” He straightens out with a roll of his neck, falling back in a copy of the stance they’d crafted for him.

It’s a streamlined project between herself and Shikaku. The Nara clan was a clan of thinkers and their style had developed to suit it but for all that Shikamaru preferred to cloud watch he had been early and insistent about learning how to do _this_ or _that_ after watching her partake in spars

It was open enough that he would be able to add and grow with it, fluid and graceful, quiet, suited for someone who would use shadows to hunt.

She slides back into her own – a bastardized mix of what had once been standard ANBU but had become crafty and explosive in motion.

“Anymore siblings I should be updated about?” she teases and his eyes narrow upon her.

And then he’s moving.

Watching Shikamaru is a bit like a dance, she thinks as she slides low, her back nearly level with the ground, hand planting down, twisting and swing lashing out with a low sweep that forces him to go up.

There were plenty of shinobi out there who didn’t bother with more than the basic stretches and the way Shikamaru contorts around her would come in real handy for him once he’s got the _kagemane no_ _jutsu_ Shikaku was teaching him down to a pat. She is really looking forward to seeing him figuring that out – she had seen him easily go down in a split and she knew for a fact that most bandits _couldn’t._

Even the smallest advantage could be the deciding factor between life and death on the battlefield.

She slides away from him, a kunai thudding down in front of his sandal, halting him before he can step into movement.

Holds up one finger.

“A single drop of blood,” she challenges him. “And I’ll hear you out.” His eyes widens before his mouth stretches out into a grin as he grasps and pulls it up with a spin and a _cinch._

“I’ll make you eat your words, Blue- _obasan_ ,” he promises her.

 _I’m counting on it,_ she thinks as she beckons him.

-

“I hear the situation cleared out fine,” Genma greets her when she slips into the jounin mess hall and she gives him a dry look that makes his mouth stretch around the senbon there, metal clicking against his teeth.

“Ever meddlesome,” she observes and there’s more than one snort around her because Genma was _notorious_ for shoving his nose into people’s business. He had a good sense for people and was popular among both the jounin and chunin corps despite, or maybe because, of it.

It’s likely why he’d been chosen as her mentor of sorts by the Yondaime – he was reliable and crafty he’d found a way to work even with the thirty-plus ANBU trailing about in a preteen body.

Genma saw problems and he solved them.

Other than Itachi he’s probably the closest thing she has to a friend even if she’d long categorized him as a mentor despite their age difference and circumstance.

He raises an eyebrow in question when she drops down on the couch beside him, stretching out with her head settling in his lap.

“I’m leaving in an hour,” she informs him. “Got any fun gossip?” _Anything I should be cautious of?_

She would be spending a month in Kumo with Izumo and visiting enemy territory was always something to treat with caution. They were reasonably friendly with Kumo but it didn’t say a lot when the other neighbouring villages included Iwa, which had a personal vendetta against their Yondaime after the war, and a Mizukage that had issued a kekkei genkai purge inside his own walls.

She was also cautious about the Kazekage who had ordered his own son _dead,_ failing only because of the Ichibi inside of him.

It was such a startling contrast to the Yondaime’s handling of his jinchuuriki son but she hopes that Gaara’s letter exchange with Naruto might lead to something good between them. Her Kage had spoken fondly of the Kazekage-to-be, after all.

“Nothing more than the usual,” Genma responds and she hums as he slips her a small note on the inside of her collar, securing it with a brush of chakra as he disguises the motion with a squeak of her nose.

They’re joined by Raidou and Gai who is practically buzzing with excitement, news of his genin on his lips, and Blue listens with idle curiosity while food is split between them and someone takes the time to heat up some fruity tea.

Team 9 hadn’t technically graduated yet but they were slotted to a fast-track through the ranks with Gai as their chosen sensei and while jounin sensei’s usually checked in on their teams beforehand it was usually a month or so before graduation and not some six months ahead.

But Gai was ANBU Commander and he was enthusiastic – it made for an intense combination.

She wouldn’t be surprised if at least one on his team would rank among the younger jounin’s in peace times. He had a way of drawing out talent and instil discipline while not making it obvious that was what he was doing.

Gai’s eccentrics might trick the younger generations and fools but no-one really made high-rank without picking up hobbies and idiosyncrasies along the way and Gai was blaring and clever, explosive and capable of making hard choices that had led to him leading some of the best ANBU teams in this Konoha.

Yuhi Kurenai, Hatake Kakashi and Sarutobi Asuma had been the jounin of Konoha Twelve, she knows that much, and she knows Kakashi is slotted for the future Team Seven even if he himself wasn’t necessarily aware of it.

Or rather in denial about it, she suspects.

Naruto would begin his shinobi career at twelve and Blue acknowledges that she feels rather like she's running out of time.

-

Blue D is named for the cousin of the Raikage – a small child who reaches up to catch her uncle A’s hand with shining eyes and a crinkle of blue eyes, cheeks dimpling when they stop by for a visit. He’s not a man who cares much for children but his cousin’s child is a determined thing and he admits himself fond of her.

When his cousin and her husband betrays him he finds himself sparing the child, watching with the warm blood of their kin dripping from his hands as she’s taken away by one of his most trusted shinobi, hand over her mouth to muffle her cries.

Desperation and wet horror, eyes too young to have seen what they had.

_-_

A looks down on the sheet of shinobi registered to take the jounin exam, thumb stroking over the last name on the list.

PARTICIPANT: KAMIZUKI IZUMO

PARTNER: BLUE D

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a fun chapter to write and next up is Kumo! An arc I've realllly been looking forward to. Lots of stuff is gonna be happening as we thread our way here and a _jounin exam_ , well, it just wouldn't do for Amegakure to miss something so important, _right?_
> 
> Sorry about the late updates - life is a bit of a mess, still. But after April it should start clearing up a bit for me. I think.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoyed <3
> 
> Cheers!


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